Digital Primers and Coatings

Digital printing presents new challenges and opportunities for printers and brand companies. Spring Coating Systems is at the forefront of bringing digital technology to the standards of traditional printing.

Digital inks and transfer technologies can have shortcomings in terms of adhesion, print speed, color density, bleeding, scratch and scuff resistance, chemical resistance and over-printing.

To address these issues, Spring proposes a range of coatings and primers for the various digital printing methods.

These products include:

  • Primers for water-based ink jet including memjet printheads
  • Primers for UV ink jet printers
  • Primers for HP Indigo
  • Protective over-print varnishes for HP Indigo
  • Over-print varnishes for all ink jet technologies, including UV ink jet.
  • Hot-stamp and DOD receptive coatings for markets such as gift cards

Digital Primers

Primers for digital printing improve adhesion to a wide range of print media.  Digital primers also improve print quality, physical properties and production speeds.

Ink jet printing, in particular water-based ink jet systems such as Memjet, require primers for coated paper and traditional film media.  The IJC ink jet primer anchors the print to the substrate, providing excellent color density and bleed resistance (see video for BOPP memjet water resistance).  With our IJC primers, you may eliminate the extra costs for protective topcoat or overlays.  In addition, the IJC primer helps optimize production speeds by significantly reducing drying times while improving print definition.  IJC ink jet primers are applied using coating stations capable of coating (and drying) thick coat weights.  As such, IJC primers are most suitable to converters equipped with high volume coating and drying units.  Please consult Spring Coating Systems to determine whether your current equipment is IJC compatible.

Spring’s UV-curable Flow-LV and water-based IJP-16151 improve adhesion of all UV ink jet systems to a wide variety of substrates including treated BOPP, PS, PE and PET. In addition, IJP-16151 will seal porous papers to allow high quality UV ink jet printing with high ink densities and excellent adhesion.

Spring’s HP primer range is a water-based coating for both film and paper and is a cost-effective alternative to traditional solutions.  The HP primer is applied using a flexo process and is compatible with all HP printers and their coating units.  Special attention should be paid when converting HP in-line coaters as there can be compatibility issues between different primers.

Over-print Coatings for Digital Printing

Spring digital over-print varnishes make your digital print scratch and scuff resistant as well as imparting water and chemical resistance properties.

UV-95 LM is a UV-curable overprint varnish for UV inkjet applications.  UV-95LM is low migration and compliant with the swiss ordinance and Nestlé Guidelines.

The HPV series for HP over-print coating is a UV-curable protective coating system which is applied like a standard UV flexo coating.  It has excellent adhesion to HP inks and provides excellent gloss.  HPV coatings guarantee that your HP prints will be rugged and meet the toughest consumer standards.  The HPV series is also available in UV LED and EB-curing versions.

Spring also provides a broad range of flexo-printable, protective coatings, both water-based and UV, for ink jet.  These coatings come in a range of visual effects, from high gloss to satin and, even, soft-touch.  These coatings are an inexpensive way to improve bleed and scuff resistance for your ink jet prints.

Sometimes, print needs to be personalized via hot stamping, scratch off and signature panels, thermal transfer or digital printing techniques such as DOD (drop on demand) ink-jet.  In the gift card market, for example, Spring has a range of coatings used for card personalization.  RV-4865 is the original UV flexo coating that provides a glass-like surface to the card (can even replace the film laminate!) and is over-printable with any number of finishing techniques.  RVM-10143 is the satin-finished version.

Discover 3 of our ranges