High-Speed Printing on Glass Bottles: Overcoming Challenges in Beverage Coding and Marking
19 September 2024
Bottling coding and marking is all about volume.
It’s not unusual for bottling plants to process 100,000 bottles per hour, so ensuring that your marking process is reliable, and can produce high quality prints at rapid speeds is essential. But this is easier said than done, and printing onto glass bottles comes with its challenges.This post explores the challenges of marking and coding on glass bottles, and the innovative printing solutions we know enable high-speed production without compromising quality.
The challenges:
Surface and shape: Glass is non-porous and smooth, meaning that it doesn’t easily absorb ink, and it can be difficult to achieve strong adhesion and durability. The smooth surface can cause ink to smear or run, leading to illegible markings. In addition to this, the curvature of the bottles can easily distort printed text or code, making it difficult to read or scan.
Environmental factors: The bottling process often involves fluctuations in temperature, moisture levels, and exposure to different chemicals – impacting adhesion and durability, especially when printing at high speeds.
Speed and precision: The demand for high-speed production lines in the bottling industry demands printing solutions that can keep up with rapid processes. Achieving precision at high speeds without compromising print quality is a significant, and well-known challenge.
The solutions:
LEIBINGER continuous ink jet (CIJ) printers are ideally suited for the bottling industry because of their reliability and efficiency. These printers are designed to minimise downtime, one of the biggest challenges on high-speed production lines. LEIBINGER’s Sealtronic technology, a standout feature, prevents ink from drying out, ensuring the printer is always ready to start without requiring frequent cleaning or maintenance – keeping production lines running smoothly.
In addition to this, there are CIJ solutions made for meeting the hygiene and durability requirements of the bottling industry. The JET3up PRO model is IP65-compliant, making it resistant to water and dust, and capable of withstanding the rigorous cleaning processes necessary to maintain hygiene standards. This durability ensures consistent performance even in the challenging environments typical of bottling facilities. On top of this, there are a variety of high-adhesion inks specifically formulated to adhere well to glass, even in the presence of moisture or condensation.
If CIJ isn’t what you’re looking for, ATD’s thermal ink jet (TIJ) range might be the answer. TIJ printers are well known for their ability to produce high quality codes, at high speeds. With inks available that offer quick drying times, and strong adhesion, TIJ is an ideal solution for applications where fine details are required. Alternatively, ATD also offer laser printing solutions. If you’re interested in finding out more about them, please drop us an email using the contact information below.
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- 16/05/2023 - Introducing the Leibinger IQJET to the UK
