Eco Solvent Inks
Gaining Popularity for
Environment
Friendly Printing

In a wide format digital printing system, the most important factors, along with digital printers, are inks and media. Inks are particularly increasing its importance in the industry
as digital printing technology advances fast. As for inks,
we are going to take specifically a look at
eco-solvent ink, which is beginning to gain popularity in economically advanced countries and to explore applications of the wide format digital printing ink.

Types of Solvent Inks
Solvent can be classified into an alcohol based-, an ester based-, an ketone based- and a hydrocarbon based fluid depending on how well it is dissolved and how its molecule is structured, and how it is used by its own purpose. There are around 300 different types of solvents. They are widely used for the application on wide format digital printing as well as for many other chemical products such as adhesives, cleansers and paints that need to aerificate and dissolves. Because of a great number of different types of solvents, its combination for ink production can vary for each ink manufacturer, not to mention wide format digital printers. A critical issue of whether it is strong solvent or eco solvent has recently risen over the wide format digital printing market. Some argue that ink can be sorted by the ratio of ketone-based solvent while other experts say
we can name the digital printers a eco solvent equipment only when using designed materials. There are also other ink specialists who are willing to call those using acetate solvent strong solvent including Ketone strong solvent and those using ester solvent eco solvent inks. It is likely that no one will turn out to be right or wrong because everybody has his or her own way of distinguishing strong solvent from eco solvent.

The New Technology Making The World Change
The word, Eco, is a prefix coming from Economic? It started to be used in front of products or services which can help reduce cost or time. As 21st century started, many people began to take more interest in environment. Recently, a new fever called 밯ell- being?is spreading around people. Accordingly the meaning of the 멐co?word has been naturally changed into 멐cological? which is more close to environment. In the sign industry, digital printing providers have been complained about the stink from solvent inks and have felt dizzy after operating digital printer for several times. So, there has been a strong desire to develop and introduce a new type of ink without smell and harm to human bodies in the industry. Ink manufacturers in developed countries tried to develop and produce environment-friendly alternatives inks with little smell while maintainning the same performance as existing solvent ink. In Western Europe, such Eco solvent ink has been already leading the digital printing market.

Market Prospect
Eco solvent ink can provide high-resolution graphics as water-based digital printer does without any smell. Industry experts say a few years ago, most of the indoor digital printing graphics were printed by water based printers, but now solvent based printers are also able to provide indoor graphics if eco solvent inks are used. This means with one printer, we can print a variety of purpose graphics and moreover, the boundary of applications of a wide format digital printer can be obscure dramatically. But the problem is price. Eco solvent inks are on sale by 2 ~ 6 times higher prices than ordinary solvent ink. Its market prospect will not be bright if a product is not affordable to consumers no matter how good it is. But there is much room for price cut if demand from consumers increases and consumers?perception changes. A wide format digital printing industry is attempting a dramatic turnaround as HP announced its plan to release a wide format digital printer for eco-solvent ink through the OEM to be launched in early 2006.