Non Toluene Gravure Ink Development for Flexible Packaging Printing

This research aims to develop non toluene Gravure inks for consumer. Although toluene is a commonly solvent in gravure inks, but it is hazardous and carcinogenic. It is the hazardous substance type 3 under the Hazardous Substance Act B.E. 2535. The research develops three non toluene Gravure inks formulas and then test in three conditions. The first condition is inks quality under evaporation solvent rates, fogging, blockage of anilox cell, Ink viscosity. The second condition is print quality of ink prototype by gravure printing to analyst density, print contrast ratio, text size, dot area, color different, and color gamut. The last condition is residual solvent. The results of testing compared with in-house standard show that the quality of solvent with ration between Isopropyl alcohol: Ethyl Acetate (2.5:2) conform to the standard. It also reduces cost by 4.2%. These results can be concluded that the non toluene Gravure inks can be used in flexible packaging printing.