Why Silicone Sleeve an Essential Material for Adhesive and Corona Treatment?

Adhesive and fastening industries are the fastest growing industries in the business-to-business marketplace. As technology rapidly changes, the demand for the notch products in these industries increases. Adhesive industries such as plastic, coating, etc focus on effective printing on such material. Considering quality as the king of any market,  these industries’ can only achieve quality customer satisfaction through effective printing. 

The industries continue to seek for reliability and flexibility with the corona treatment. In order to achieve a highly effective printing solution on plastic substrates, it is essential to perform corona treatment correctly. The treatment is done to increase the surface energy of materials whose surface energy is not adequate

Silicone sleeves can provide appropriate adhesion and good bonding to such substrates without the use of any high-end surface modification technique or primer. 

Adhesion and why it is necessary?

Bonding any type of silicone sleeve requires an understanding of the mechanism necessary for the strong bond: surface energy. The surface energy is the determining factor in how an adhesive spreads across the surface. In general, surface tension is the ability or tendency of liquid to shrink into minimum surface area possible.  For the quality printing or coating solution, superior adhesion is required. Commonly, it is accepted that the surface energy must exceed that of the adhesive for adequate contact. 

Better the adhesive spread and wettability, the more the intimate contact between molecules, thus allowing more reactive groups to interact or bond.

Low surface energy materials do not allow the adhesive to spread out, meaning they are generally poor candidates for bonding.  For poor candidate adhesive material such as plastic, corona treatment is the solution. 

Why silicone sleeve?

Series of problems can arise due to poor adhesive property. Also, a lot of problems can block effective solutions when the system for corona treatment conveys too much or too little energy to the substrate.

The material type, thickness, and supplier are all significant factors that can affect the appropriate adhesion and wettability. 

Prior to addressing corona treatment, it is vital to address silicone sleeves such as dielectric constants. Failure in the corona treatment will cost so much, jeopardizing business expense accounts. 

Silicone sleeves are an ideal solution for corona treatment due to several reasons. Here are some of the reasons:

-Do not break or crack under unusual web tension

-Require much less web tension

-Can be operated with a small air gap due to sleeve

-Easy to replace

-Good electric insulation

-Ozone corona discharge resistance

– Can be operated at high temperature without any loss of mechanical and dielectric properties

-Suitable for continuous operation at a temperature of 180º C

-Long life

-Have dielectric strength of 250-500 Votts/mm

– Provide flexibility and resilience in case of insulation on treatment rolls

-Long life

-Variant in size and color

The surface energy of the material is simply checked by applying the stroke of dyne test markers. Dyne pens are an easy, quick, affordable, and effective method of verifying the substrate treat level.

Although there is always an argument for the dyne test, considering the output. But dyne pens if used properly, will deliver accurate results. It is a good alternative to other toxic methods, especially where the preciseness is not necessary. The non-toxic pens do not contain any harsh chemicals like formaldehyde. 

Conclusion:

Silicone sleeves are an excellent material to use for corona treatment. With superior dielectric properties, flexibility, formulated for maximum zone corona discharge resistance- it can serve many additional applications of many industries. International Converting Equipment (ICE) is a leading manufacturer of the dielectric sleeve and non-toxic dyne pens. 

For more information about ICE silicone sleeve for corona treaters, visit the website or contact ICE. l