NL1029194C1 - PVC floor tile, has digitally printed decorative pattern applied following pre treatment of tile with primer - Google Patents

Abstract

The tile has been pre-treated with Prime IT primer and then a decorative pattern has been printed on it using digital technology. The pattern is printed with an inkjet printer using UV-curable ink.

Description

»Λ PVC floor tile with digital decoration

For years, floors and floor tiles have been made from PVC and linoleum. In this case laminates 5 are used which consist of transparent PVC on the top side, which is printed on the inside to protect the decoration, and which consist of a colored layer on the bottom side which can be connected to the substrate by gluing or otherwise. The decoration is applied using standard decoration techniques, including using gravure printing. These traditional decoration techniques are only economical if large series and large lengths can be produced because the start-up times are long and the investments in gravure rolls and the like are high.

In the market, however, there is increasing interest in tailor-made floor decorations for small spaces (a few tens to a few hundred square meters), for example for exhibitions, but also for spaces where architects have coordinated the entire design.

Digital decoration techniques, such as plotters, are in principle ideal for this, were it not for floors to be mechanically loaded and therefore excellent adhesion is required between the decorative layer and the PVC. To date, no good solution has been found for this problem and personalized floors cannot be made economically justified. However, this invention offers a commercially attractive solution by combining digital printing technology with chemical modification of the surface to be printed.

The invention is based on the direct digital printing of a PVC film or sheet on a roll, using a special primer that is applied to the PVC surface before printing. The special primer is marketed by the company Ciba Specialty Chemicals under the brand name Prime IT® (Ciba SC, Sasso Marconi, Bologna, Italy, (see: http://www.cibasc.com/index/ ind-index /ind-img/ind-img-ciba_primeit.htm), in both 1029194

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2 experiments use of Renolit PVC Digitaldruckfolie (see http://www.renolit.com/renolitag/ deutsch / sk_druck.htm) in 100 μπι thickness. The digital press uses 'The.Factory' (pronounced: the dot 5 factory) from Agfa-Dotrix NV (see http://www.dotrix.be) and Agorix® UV-curable ink jettable ink (see http: // www.agfa.com). Printing was carried out at a speed of 16 meters per minute and with a lamp setting of 120 W / cm on the standard UV lamp and also 120 W / cm on the iron-doped UV lamp. A corona pre-treatment was applied in-line, with the machine set to the maximum power of 900 watts.

EXAMPLE

The 200-xm Renolit PVC film was pre-treated with Prime IT® by Ciba in Sasso Marconi, Italy and made available for experiments. Printing was done in the manner described above. Two days after printing, as well as three weeks after printing, the adhesion of the ink to the PVC film was measured by performing a so-called drum peel test. The peel strength in N / mm two days after printing appeared not to be measurable; the film broke after strong elongation during the test. The same result was obtained when determining the peel strength three weeks after printing. From these tests it thus appears that the adhesion of the Agorix® ink to the PVC film is excellent and that the PVC film tears and breaks when an attempt is made to pull it off. It also appears that migration of additives to the PVC film (often phthalates) does not adversely affect adhesion after three weeks.

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COMPARATIVE EXAMPLE

In the comparative example, the same Renolit PVC film, but this time 'as received', so without Prime It® pre-treatment, was printed with identical conditions as in the example described above. The peel strength of a laminate tested according to exactly the same test method was only 1.4 N per mm width if tested two days after printing and even just 0.8 N / mm if three weeks after 1 029 1 9 4 «· 3 was tested. In both cases, the PVC film could easily be pulled loose and there was a break in the interface between the PVC film and the cured Agorix® ink.

Both experiments thus show that the application of the Prime IT® pretreatment, in which a molecule with a photoinitiator is covalently bound to the treated substrate and in which it is located at the location of the photoinitiator during UV crosslinking of the Agorix® ink a chemical bond is formed with the acrylic ink network, so that the inks are covalently bonded to the substrate via Prime It® bridges, providing excellent adhesion. Because small quantities of material can be economically printed with The.Factory, PVC floor tiles can be made in this way in small series that meet all technical requirements.

Bonding to the printed PVC on the cured and fully cross-linked Agorix® ink side proved to be no problem at all and to meet all requirements.

In projects, usually PVC floor tiles of a size of 30 cm x 30 cm or 60 cm x 60 cm are used. These tiles can be cut from printed rolls that have the correct width.

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Claims (5)

Floor tile made of PVC, provided with a decoration digitally applied directly to the PVC, characterized in that the adhesion of this decoration to the PVC is excellent and meets all technical requirements for floors. Floor tile made of PVC according to claim 1, characterized in that the PVC has been pre-treated with Prime IT® adhesion promoter from Ciba Specialty Products. Floor tile made of PVC according to claims 1 and 2, characterized in that the substrate was printed with The.Factory from Agfa-Dotrix, using Agorix® inks. Floor tile made of PVC according to claims 1 to 3, characterized in that the cost price of the production is also acceptable for small series of only a few tens or hundreds of square meters, because flexible digital printing technology is used . 5. Floor tiles made of wear-resistant, transparent plastics other than PVC, which have been pre-treated with Prime It®, can be printed according to the characteristics of claims 3 and 4, and are technically suitable for use as floor tiles. 25 30 i 35 1 0 29 1 9 V