The SE Silicone Ink

Natron™ SE Silicone ink is ideal for pad printing or screen printing on any item made of silicone rubber. Examples of silicone rubber products include custom silicone wristbands and swimming caps. The SE ink is used in promotional, medical, toys, drink-ware, and industrial applications. Typical silicone application include, silicone wristbands, swim caps, and silicone phone cases. Industrial applications include silicone handles for tools. Promotional, medical, toys, drink-ware, and custom silicone molding industries use the SE ink.

The Natron™ SE ink is also designed for ease of use. It also has the highest opacity, gloss, and flexibility compared to any other ink.

Ink mixing, printing & curing:

To print your product, mix the silicone ink (A) with the catalyst (B), print and cure the product. For every 20 parts of the ink (A) add 1 part of the catalyst (B). Mix the ink and the catalyst. Add 5 - 20% of the SE-TRM Solvent to alter viscosity. To dry and cure the printed product, use heat. Put the printed product in an oven for 2-5 minutes at 200-250°F (2 minutes at 250°F). (Safety caution! Wait for the heated product to cool down before touching).

After full cure try to bend, scratch or stretch the printed product. We guarantee that the print (ink) will not crack or rub off – the print becomes part of the product. This is the reason the SE series silicone ink is perfect for printing on silicone rubber products.

Solvents: Use SE-TRM & SE-TR Solvents to alter the viscosity. This is if the mixed ink is too thick for a specific application. The SE-TR is a fast drying thinner, while the SE-TRM has a slow evaporation time. Both ink solvents are environmentally friendly. They have zero VOCs and will not affect the adhesion of the system.

Attention:

If you use any other the solvents with the SE inks, it will affect printing quality and adhesion of the ink.

Drying: Printed parts dry at 200-250°F for 2-8 minutes.

Caution: Silicone Ink is compatible with many types of silicone rubber. However, contact with some substrates will inhibit the drying of Silicone Ink. We recommend that you always do a small-scale compatibility test before full production.

Call us for more information: +1 (781) 281 2558

Compliance:

CPSIA means Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act. Boston Industrial Solutions, Inc. was awarded this certificate as a symbol of compliance for its inks. This in turn should give you printing confidence. We make the best silicone ink in the world. In addition, our goal is to make the best and the safest inks for the industry, now and in the future. The purpose of this is twofold.

• To formulate an ink that is safe for printers.
• Make an ink that is safe for recipients of final product.

But first let’s discuss CPSIA certification. CPSIA Certification means the issuance of a written Children’s Product Certificate (CPC) in which the manufacturer certifies that its children’s product complies with all applicable children’s product safety rules (or similar rules, bans, standards, or regulations under any law enforced by the Commission for that product.)

Third party testing is the basis of children’s products certification. Upon passing the test of third party testing, the third party testing laboratory provides the results and certification. However, it does not issue the children’s product certificate.

USP MEM Elution Cytotoxicity certification

The Natron™ SE Silicone inks have USP MEM Elution Cytotoxicity certification. This certification indicates that the silicone inks meets the requirements of the test and are not considered to have a cytotoxic effect. The study is conducted to determine Biological reactivity (cellular degeneration and malformation) on a scale from Grade 0 (No Reactivity) to Grade 4 (Severe Reactivity). The Natron™ SE Silicone inks got a grade of 0 - No Reactivity! Discrete intracytoplasmic granules; no cell lysis. 

Silicone printing challenges:

Today, there are many silicone printing problems. This is because, printing on silicone poses many challenges to professional printers. As a result, the printing experts have many questions. Boston Industrial Solutions, Inc. has come up with innovative solutions. First, let’s explore the challenges and finally offer solutions to these challenges.

The challenges:

Some of the key challenges when printing on silicone are:

• Paste ink/ Pasty ink – These inks need to be heavily thinned for the customer to be able to use them. In essence, the customer is actually making the ink. This lowers productivity. Also, because the inks are a paste, this poses mixing and color matching challenges for printers. Users of the silicone ink have to heavily rely on ink manufacturers for custom colors. This is time consuming not to mention the long lead time and customer color matching fees.
• Translucent/ Not Opaque ink – According to Photoscreenprint, ink opacity affects the ability of colors to blend with each other, as well as how much substrate shows through the print. The more opaque an ink is the better it will cover a dark garment. When pad printing with transparent inks it is not possible to obtain opaque prints. As a result printers have to double hit a print. This not only slows down productivity but also increase ink usage.
• Lack of glossy printing ink – This impacts the final customer.  Unhappy customers translates to bad reviews or lost revenue for printers.
• Consistent ink quality – The current inks in the industry vary in particle sizes, color consistency in every batch.  This makes it hard for printers to use existing mixing ratios, printing speeds, color matching etc.

All these silicone printing problems contribute to inefficiencies, wastage, and higher productions costs. Labor and production material costs go up due to the silicone ink. At minimum production costs for printing silicone is about 30% higher. Poorly formulated silicone inks cause all these challenges and inefficiencies. Yet, decorating companies continue to use these inks. This is because they do not have an alternative, until now.

The solutions:

This is silicone printing simplified. Introducing the Natron™ SE Series Silicone ink line from Boston Industrial Solutions. This silicone ink is formulated to solve all customer printing pain points in the printing process.

We spend over 1,000 hours studying customer problems. Our approach was simple. To create an innovative and advanced silicone ink for screen and pad printing.

The SE™ silicone ink, is a two component silicone ink that is easy to use. Because the ink is a real ink with flow (Not a paste), it is very easy to mix and use. Simply, add the catalyst to the ink, mix it and print your product. Customers do not need to add any solvent to the ink. In addition, the inks are made of pure silicone, giving you a peace of mind that there are no strange materials in the ink. The Natron SE ink is very opaque. Just pad print once! These features save time, labor, and the amount of ink used for printing.

Additional solutions:

• • Our containers are uniquely designed to enable users to use all the ink in the can. This design prevents ink spillage or wastage.
  • Mixing instructions guide in English and Spanish. The mixing guide contains easy to understand mixing, printing and drying instructions. The mixing guide provided to you for free. You can download the guide on our website, and is included as part of every order.
  • Because we know that customers face the challenge of determining if the product that they have is real silicone, we offer a free testing lab. Send your product to us, and in less that 24 hrs, we will provide you with a complete report on the product and a solution for your product.
  • 24/7 access free to our ink specialists. Call us today +1 (781) 281 -2558 or send us an email by clicking here.

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