Sealing UV?

[MilanoGuru]

Ok so I got this customer be brought me plexiglass. He wants to know how to Seal the UV to make it harder than it already is. I have explained to him that UV is like a Brick of Ink its solid and so on. He says he wants it scratch resistant... Heard of this stuff called Crystal Bond but not sure of it. I dont want any more damn chemicals in my shop I dont need... any help would be great!
Thanks again

Steve

 

[Malkin]

How about a polycarb based overlaminate?

It would certainly be scratch resistant, although I have no idea if it would be appropriate on acrylic.

 

[Mspec]

if it is clear plexi, flip the image and do a reverse print. Then the ink is already protected by the plexi, plus the colors will pop better and you will lose all of the matte "uv print" look to the job.

 

[cmpginc]

I want to back up Mspec's idea.. reverse print so the plexi itself protects the ink.

We pre-treat lexan for reverse print so the UV ink sticks better but do not after coat it in any way. Not sure how well UV ink sticks to plexi as we have not done it before. But the Sericol ze-1000 adhesion promoter is supposed to work with many plastics other than lexan like we use it for.

We've found 3M adhesives, and others, have a reaction to the UV ink from our Mimaki JF-1631 and causes it to de-laminate so the overlam may cause you similar problems. We are still going back and forth with 3M for options on this one.

Yeah you are right if it's cured correctly it is like a brick of ink.. but the customer is paying for the job so you gotta give them what they want! I have a customer that requested a UV protective coating on top of the UV print we did on white sintra.. I said you don't need it but if you want it you'll get it.. I bought cans of spray clear coat and sprayed it after printed and cut!!

 

[benjercorp]

I'll recommend sericol seal ask your distributor which fit you best

 

[jdigital]

We use Sericols ZE-680 for acrylic. It works great on our Incas