Digital UV on Powdercoated Metal

[JoDa]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone has had any success printing Digital UV on Powdercoated Metal and having a modicum of adhesion?

I think that printing would not be the issue, but adhesion would be, so perhaps an protective overcoat?

Obviously there is not much Dine (if any) on the powder coated metal, but thought I would throw it out here.

Thanks in advance.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone has had any success printing Digital UV on Powdercoated Metal and having a modicum of adhesion?

I think that printing would not be the issue, but adhesion would be, so perhaps an protective overcoat?

Obviously there is not much Dine (if any) on the powder coated metal, but thought I would throw it out here.

Thanks in advance.

We've printed to powder coated steel in the past, but we were doing exclusively white ink, which has slightly better adhesion in my experience. The ink COULD be scraped off with a little bit of work, but it printed and
cured just fine. Unless someone was deliberately trying to scrape the ink off with some sort of tool, it held up okay.

It probably depends a little on the material and the ink, but I would try to do a little test run before hand to see if it's going to work.

 

[seinsig]

JoDa

Adhesion protocols vary for each application. Good to excellent adhesion can be achieved on powder coated metals with the correct inkset/pretreatment combo. Some of our customers have not had to pretreat at all, others have used flame or IPA wipes for adequate adhesion. The one major pitfall we ran into with one manufacturer was there was a very small amount of teflon in the powder coating, and as you may expect, nothing stuck to it, regardless of the ink/pt.

 

[Brian27]

It would likely also depend a lot on what type of finish powder coating it is. Matte, semi-gloss or gloss.

While I haven't tried to print on powder coating yet, we did have a lot of problems with adhesion to plastics and we got AP3155 from Supply55 and it works extremely well on plastic as well as other things. I was really amazed how well it worked with so little. We actually mix it with some alcohol type cleaner to a 30/1 ratio and it still works great.

I was emailing Steven there back and fourth and he was pretty helpful. He'd probably be able to tell you if it'd work.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

Interesting....so you mixed it 30:1 (alcohol:AP3155)?

We've got a bottle of that stuff (AP3155), as well as Matthews Paint Prep, and Mimaki's prep/adhesion promoter.

So far printing to powder coated steel has been a breeze (gloss finish) but we've had some issues with some aluminums (adhesion) and dibond (contamination, streaking etc).

For the most part the only prep I do on materials is soak the crap out of a lint free microfiber cloth with a 50/50 mix of Isopropyl Alcohol and water. I'll wipe the whole sheet down and get it soaked and then buff it out with another dry lint free microfiber cloth. It seems the water slows down the evaporation rate of the alcohol (which is extremely high) and allows you a bit more time to buff it off before it dries and leaves a residue, which shows in most light colors.


After 15 months with our Oce Arizona we're still experimenting with different materials, chemicals and techniques but powder coated steel has been one of the easiest to work with so far. I didn't really perform a true scratch test on them but the environment that they were going to be exposed to didn't warrant one.

The point about printing white first is a good one. If you add too many layers of white the thickness may be more susceptible to chipping or flaking, but it does create a nice base layer to print your actual graphics on - whether it be spot white or a flood.

Are you using 91% IPA or 70% IPA? I've found that using the 91% does a great job of cleaning and doesn't leave streaking. Doesn't even require any extra buffing for the most part.

The only problem is that 91% and 99.9% IPA can work a little TOO well sometimes. Haha!

 

[BigfishDM]

These aluminum and zinc jigs were powder coated and I have tried doing it with UV and it worked fine, I ended up doing 3D Sublimation instead because of the application but it should work fairly well.

 

[Brian27]

Interesting....so you mixed it 30:1 (alcohol:AP3155)?

Are you using 91% IPA or 70% IPA?

It's actually MPC 6428SD (smells kinda like alcohol) which we bought for prepping/cleaning acrylic and "eliminating static" because at the time I was having all sorts of problems that in the end were not static and it turns out alcohol did just as good of job at getting rid of static.

The reason I mixed it was because the 3155 like you said can leave streaks. Especially in lighter colors and gradients. I was trying make it so it dried clear which is why I tried mixing it with the MPC and it works almost as well as straight 3155 when I did a side by side razor/laminate test. I just put the MPC in a 33 oz spray bottle and mix an ounce of 3155 in.

It's also worth noting, that at least for acrylic/plastic, when I tested 99% Alcohol, MPC, 3155 and Nothing. Alcohol performed the worst by far in the adhesion test I do which made sense because when I started using alcohol our prints would literally blow off with compressed air. I haven't test an alcohol/3155 mix because I've got a gallon of this mpc stuff that I'm gonna use first.

 

[JoDa]

The challenge I foresee is that the powder coated steel pieces in question will be subjected to bumping and potential scratching as they are parts for amps in the music industry.

As Pat mentioned printing on the powder quoted metal shouldn't be a problem...it's the longevity of the image (primarily white or spots) that I am concerned about.

I wonder if there is some sort of coating I could use to protect the image/graphics?

 

[Andy D]

Silly question, is the pre-painted aluminum from sign supply vendors powder coated?

 

[Ditchmiester]

Silly question, is the pre-painted aluminum from sign supply vendors powder coated?

I know where we get our pre painted aluminum it's not powder it's an enamel and we can print to that with fantastic results.

 

[Signman001]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone has had any success printing Digital UV on Powdercoated Metal and having a modicum of adhesion?

I think that printing would not be the issue, but adhesion would be, so perhaps an protective overcoat?

Obviously there is not much Dine (if any) on the powder coated metal, but thought I would throw it out here.

Thanks in advance.

There are several powder coating out there... for example polyester solid color powder coat from Prismatic Powders. This is one of the most common ones out there. To print on with UV inkjet inks / UV LED Digital inks, use Natron M87 Primer from Boston Industrial Solutions. This primer is very effective and works very well on a powder coated surfaces and with all OEM digital inks.