Surface Pretreatment
TouchMark's in-house surface pretreatment services provide a solution for ink adhesion challenges associated with plastic substrates that have low surface energy.
Plasma Pretreatment
TouchMark's plasma services offer a proprietary surface treatment process that temporarily increases the surface tension of difficult-to-print substrates, such as PEEK, to promote permanent ink adhesion.
This illustration shows a contact angle test which determines the wetting characteristics of a substrate. The wettability of a surface determines ink adhesion.
A contact angle greater than 90° indicates low surface energy and therefore poor wettability. In this case, ink will adhere poorly to the substrate. A contact angle less than 60° indicates higher surface energy and good wettability which translates to better ink adhesion.