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TECHNOLOGY
What is PrintGuard®?
PrintGuard® is the brand name
of the regular (clear/translucent) antimarking glass bead film
manufactured by PrintGuard, Inc. When you see the PrintGuard® name/label
on a glass beaded sheet/jacket/shipping container, you know you are
receiving the highest quality glass beaded antimarking product. We
manufacture all PrintGuard products in our 25,000 SQFT Plant in Millbury,
Massachusetts USA. PrintGuard® is the Registered Trademark of PrintGuard,
Inc.
PrintGuard® glass bead matrix
What are the benefits of
using glass beads?
1. Their spherical surface minimizes the contact
area with the wet ink to only the apex of the sphere (it's very
top).
2. Their surface is easy to clean and naturally repels ink
buildup
3. Glass beads are extremely durable, they are solvent
resistant and can resist even high crushing forces with no damage.
4.
Their smooth surfaces possess extremely low frictional forces.
5.
Various sizes of glass beads may be used (small vs. large) to achieve
products that are better suited to various printing needs.
Why is a
perfect monolayer so important?
This is what comes in contact with
the face of your wet printed sheet. To eliminate marking the face of the
sheet it must possess a uniform dense monolayer of glass beads guarantying
uniform pressure and release across the entire printed sheet.
Think
of playing a game of pool, and gathering up all 15 balls in the rack.
There you have a perfect monolayer of uniform sized balls in a tight
matrix. Now think of placing a piece of wet ink paper face down on surface
of these racked balls. The paper will be uniformly supported by the apex
of each ball and only at these points will any ink from the sheet actually
come in contact with the surface of the balls. Now consider that in the
same area you fit a matrix of 15 pool balls, we apply 5 million
balls!--that is PrintGuard, our glass beaded anti-marking
product.
With about 100,000 glass beads per square inch, you can
see why the low frictional surface of the glass bead is vital to the
functionality of the product. The freshly wet printed sheet is uniformly
supported at every point across its width and yet the wet ink is repelled
from the apex of each glass bead providing for a mark free transition from
one printing station to the next.
How are the Glass beads adhered
to the polyester film?
We use a proprietary adhesive that we custom
formulated so that the backbone of the resin tenaciously bonds to the
glass beads and the polyester film. Our adhesive is resistant to mild
press washes allowing the operator to use various cleaning solutions that
are used in printing plants.
How do you uniformly apply the glass
beads to the Polyester film?
With a large proprietary production
line specifically built to densely apply and uniformly embed billions of
glass beads onto any substrate with our custom formulated adhesive system.
For an anti-marking product to be optimal, it needs to possess
hundreds of millions of points of contact as a controlled elevation and at
a controlled distance laterally from each neighboring contact point. Our
production line was specifically designed to perform these
tasks.
Our proprietary manufacturing process guarantees that you
will always have a uniform monolayer of densely positioned glass beads. It
is this dense uniform monolayer of glass beads that eliminates ink buildup
on transfer and delivery positions which gets rid of the known problem of
marking.
Technology Features and Benefits
Features
1.
Perfect monolayer of dense glass bead matrix.
2. Low friction
surface.
3. Resistant to typically used press washes.
4. Tough 4 mil
Polyester film backing.
5. Durable construction lasts months.
6.
Unaffected by oil.
7. Easy surface to clean.
Benefits
1.
Eliminates marking of wet ink during sheet transfer.
2. Reduces machine
downtime.
3. Easy to install directly to your cylinder.
4. Monolayer
glass bead surface can be cleaned quickly and easily.
5. Long lasting
due to rugged construction of raw materials. |
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