The rapid popularization of ceramic inkjet printing technology may not have a significant effect on reducing the production costs of ceramic enterprises at present. Inkjet printing technology for simplification
The traditional screen printing and drum technology are obvious, and the most obvious is the reduction of the differences in glazed tiles between different regions in China. Ceramic inkjet printing has made imitation more convenient and fast. In the past two years when full glazing is prevalent, the popularity of ceramic inkjet printing technology has intensified the trend of product homogenization. Of course, many manufacturers have increased the complexity of composite production processes, increased the added value of products, and also increased the difficulty of imitation.
At present, the mainstream pigment requirements in the market are basically below 5u, of course, the requirements for different pigments are also different. From the samples of several companies in the market, the pigment particle size of cobalt blue and brown series products can basically reach below 5u, while the initial particle size of zirconium praseodymium yellow is relatively coarser, generally between 6-7u. The processing of pigments for ceramic ink directly affects the later performance and color development indicators of the ink. Especially for the zircon series products, due to the relatively low calcination temperature, the selection of mineralizers is particularly important, and the choice of raw materials in the ceramic pigment formula also affects the conductivity in the later stage. This is also why the market has relatively high requirements for black pigments. The iron oxide and cobalt oxide in black can basically account for 50% of the raw materials in the formula, and cobalt oxide itself also has some magnetism.
The ball mill is mainly used for the preliminary treatment of ceramic inkjet ink pigments. Adding hydrochloric acid or flake alkali during the water ball process can serve as acid or alkali washing. At present, most ceramic ink pigments in the market have not been washed or treated with water balls. Due to the complexity of the process and the additional production costs, most glaze manufacturers use dry refining. The commonly used equipment includes the micro powder machine produced in Zhejiang and the micro powder machine produced by Guangzhou Gravity. The micro powder machine has relatively little effect on processing brown series products. The brown and black colors in ceramic ink pigments, as well as cobalt blue, are basically processed by dry refining. For zirconium praseodymium yellow products, some manufacturers use dry refining to determine whether to wash them with water based on their intended use.
Domestic sand mill manufacturing enterprises have actively entered the domestic ceramic ink manufacturing process in the past three years. According to the communication between insiders in the mechanical industry and the author, sand mills have actually existed for a long time and are widely used in ink, organic ink, high-performance powder materials, and other fields.
Due to my previous work in the research of ceramic color glaze materials and the development of additive technology, I was not very familiar with machinery. Therefore, I specifically consulted Mr. Song Kefu, the general manager of Dongguan Langling Machinery, which was one of the earliest producers of sand mills in the domestic sand mill industry, regarding some aspects of sand mills. According to Mr. Song's introduction, there are two main types of sand mills used for ceramic ink production, mainly due to differences in internal structure. One is the ceramic turbine disc, and the other is the sharp tool rod tip sand mill currently promoted by Langling Company. Due to its relatively large space, the turbine type material undergoes two internal cycles of grinding, resulting in better homogenization effect. Due to the relatively concentrated space between the rod tip and the narrow space of the barrel wall, the grinding efficiency of the rod tip type is higher than that of the turbine type at the same time, but the surface decoration of the material is not as good as that of the turbine type. The effective grinding and refinement speed of materials is 13 meters per second, and surfaces below this speed are basically useless. This issue will be discussed in the next column.
Cowint is the largest DTF Film Factory in China