What are the technical challenges of mixing base carbon belts?

The technical challenges of mixed base carbon belts are mainly reflected in the following aspects:

First, the difficulty of formula design

Core trade secret: The coating formula of thermal transfer carbon tape is the core trade secret of enterprises in the industry, and it is also the core guarantee of technical performance and application effect of thermal transfer carbon tape. The general process of formula design is for enterprises to establish research and development projects through market research or user feedback information, conduct targeted screening among thousands of basic raw materials according to product development objectives, design the ratio of raw materials and functional structure collocation between coatings and form a preliminary scheme, adjust and optimize the formula after a pilot test, and then conduct pilot test. Finally achieve mass production.

Technical background and R&D personnel: the mixed base carbon strip contains a certain amount of resin components, so its texture is striped. The development of large foreign enterprises started earlier, deep technical reserves, so the formula design ability is stronger, the product line is more complete, resin based bar code carbon strip, mixed based bar code carbon strip and medical thermal transfer film and other products are rich in variety and excellent performance. Domestic enterprises are mostly limited by the scale of capital, technical background and R & D personnel and other bottlenecks, with a strong resin base and mixed base product formulation design capabilities of the enterprise number is very small.

Second, coating preparation process

Technical difficulties: The large-scale, continuous and stable preparation of high quality coatings is one of the key links in the production of thermal transfer carbon tape. Coating preparation usually includes feeding, dissolution, dispersion, grinding, testing, transportation and other processes. The technical difficulties of coating preparation are mainly reflected in the selection, structural design and function optimization of chemical kettle, dispersion kettle and grinding equipment, so as to match the coating characteristics of different products and different coatings, and meet the diversified requirements of technical indicators such as paint particle size, viscosity and solid content of product production. In addition, technical means such as automatic control are needed to improve the coating preparation efficiency and quality stability and consistency, laying the foundation for the efficiency and process accuracy of subsequent coating links. The coating preparation process has certain personalized characteristics, and the carbon belt manufacturers complete the process path design and customized equipment procurement according to their own product categories and process requirements, and continue to optimize and improve the above technical difficulties.

Third, coating technology

Technical difficulties: enterprises in the industry combined with their own product characteristics, around the coating mode, transfer mode and scraper type research, selection and combined application; The matching of oven heating mode, oven length, inlet and exhaust air volume with product characteristics and production efficiency; The relationship between temperature and humidity of process environment and product quality; Research and combined application of various electrostatic elimination methods; The relationship between air intake and exhaust volume of oven and energy consumption; The compatibility of tension parameter setting with different product characteristics; Study on coating quality control and coating defect elimination measures; The research and application of automation control technology means and other issues, to carry out long-term technology research and development and application exploration. The coating process also has certain personalized characteristics, carbon belt manufacturers need to design and optimize the process path and coating device according to the production requirements of different products, to improve the coating speed and process stability.

Fourth, product performance improvement

Increased user demand: With the continuous upgrading of downstream application scenarios, users' performance requirements for middle and high-end products such as thermal transfer carbon tape, especially resin-based barcode carbon tape, mixed-based barcode carbon tape and medical thermal transfer film continue to increase. First of all, users often hope that the same carbon belt is suitable for multiple types of printers and a variety of printed media, so as to reduce the procurement and time costs caused by frequent replacement of carbon belts, and high compatibility has become one of the development directions. Secondly, the application of high-end products continues to expand to unconventional and even extreme environments, requiring products to meet the extreme environment for wear resistance, weather resistance, corrosion resistance, washing resistance and other performance requirements, such as high temperature resistance ceramic carbon belt; Finally, in order to improve printing efficiency and reduce production costs, users need thermal transfer carbon tape with faster printing speed, and from offline printing to online printing development, to meet the development trend of production integration and automation.

Fifth, environmental protection requirements

Water-based coatings instead of solvent coatings: In the future, with the improvement of environmental protection requirements, water-based coatings will gradually replace solvent coatings to reduce the use and volatilization of organic solvents, and realize the safety, economy and environmental protection of the production process. At present, the difficulty in the formulation of water-based coatings is that there are limitations in the selection of raw materials, polymer materials that are only dissolved in organic solvents can form a stable dispersion state in water through chemical modification, emulsification and other special processes, some of which require special chemical processing to avoid sedimentation and agglomeration. In the future, the formulation materials of water-based coatings are expected to be further developed and applied.

In summary, there are many technical challenges in the mixed base carbon strip, including formulation design, coating preparation process, coating process technology, product performance improvement and environmental protection requirements. In order to overcome these challenges, enterprises need to continuously increase investment in research and development and improve the level of technology to meet market demand and achieve sustainable development.