(I) Types of TTO (continuous and intermittent)
As we all know, intelligent Thermal Transfer coding machine, English full known as Thermal Transfer Overprinter, abbreviated TTO. From the point of view of the industrial identification industry, thermal transfer printing (TTO) is a contact identification equipment, together with the other eight parts (namely, inkjet machine, laser marking machine, marking machine, bar code machine, labeling machine, electronic label, system integration and supporting equipment) constitute nine parts of the industrial identification industry. TTO has won customers’ hearts because of its unique features, such as flexibility, clarity and low energy consumption, and has been widely used for printing text, patterns, production dates, lot numbers, bar codes and random information on film or carton and automatic packaging lines. As far as we know, the domestic market only began in 2007 some enterprises began to use intelligent heat transfer printing machine as product identification information, and at this time the application of heat transfer printing in foreign markets has been extremely extensive, especially in flexible packaging.
TTO is mainly composed of a print head, TTO ribbon and a controller. It uses electric heating to transfer the ink on the ribbon to the object to be marked, so as to form a variety of required information. The print head usually contains 8 to 12 dots per millimeter or 200 to 300 dots per inch (DPI), and these dots can be switched on and off rapidly and continuously.
TTO can be divided into continuous thermal transfer printer and intermittent thermal transfer printer because of the different working principles of the printing head. Continuous thermal transfer printing code machine is suitable for object material movement, horizontal movement or vertical rotation of the bagging machinery, the print head is fixed, the speed of the object material by synchronizer monitoring the speed of the ribbon and the object material match each other; At the same time, intermittent thermal transfer printer is suitable for intermittent motion packaging machinery, such as filling and sealing bagging machinery, self-adhesive label application, intermittent motion of the vertical form, the object material fixed print head relative to the ribbon and object material movement to achieve printing.
In order to ensure the full play of the value of TTO, it is recommended that customers understand the relevant knowledge of TTO before using it. For example, the ink layer is the original ink layer transferred to the packaging material, which is mainly divided into resin base, wax base and mixed base. Thermal transfer TTO ribbon top coating is used to improve the adhesion of ink on packaging materials, and protect the ink; The function of the ribbon release layer is to release the ink and ensure the uniformity of the ink. The basal layer is the carrier of other layers, and determines the ability of heat conduction; For the special coating on the back of the carbon belt, also known as the back coating, its role is mainly manifested in three aspects, first, prevent static electricity, static electricity will accumulate dust and impurities, damage the print head; Second, reduce wear, reduce print head damage; Third, lubricate the print head to increase the life of the print head.
The biggest advantages of TTO coding can be summed up in three aspects: convenience, flexibility and economy. For example, TTO can print high-definition pictures and texts on flexible packaging, and ink of various colors is heated by the nozzle and transferred to the product by the ribbon. The font is of high precision and the printing quality is very high. TTO does not use grain, so there is no need to arrange and adjust the grain, thus avoiding the danger of grain falling into food or breaking the film, and there is no cost of replacing the grain; Because TTO adopts advanced digital technology, the resolution of printed logo information can reach 300DPI, which can meet the online production line logo, and the printing quality is very high. Technological progress means that new technology can bring higher product quality, faster production speed, lower production cost, more reliable operation performance and higher product value. TTO can improve the quality of coding at the same time, but also improve the flexibility of products through printing code; TTO operation cost is very economical, can also print a variety of information, combined with customer requirements, to achieve anti-counterfeiting and anti-cross cargo function; TTO still can free programming to generate a variety of data, high resolution nozzle can print out the special characters and bar code, but also will be a lot of graphics or special characters exist in the gallery, first in the non-stop under the situation of human error or not automatically change code, maintain a high level of production efficiency, with the aid of mature thermal transfer code technology, can be directly on the packaging material code, So no labels are needed and the cost is significantly reduced. This makes TTO not only has an absolute advantage in speed, but also is favored by many customers for its advantages of convenient operation, stable performance, long-term use and cost reduction. Last but not least, because TTO uses environmentally friendly ribbon, it will not pollute the environment or harm human health. In this way, in order to better respond to the national environmental protection policy, customers are more inclined to buy and use TTO printer.
Through the market investigation, we found the TTO than other printer expensive, and many users said, TTO despite high prices, but its excellent code quality, flexibility, convenience and real-time code function, can satisfy the strict requirements of product packaging, from a long-term point of view, is advantageous to the enterprise cost savings, improve the efficiency of production, the price is very high.
Through the market investigation, we found the TTO than other printer expensive, and many users said, TTO despite high prices, but its excellent code quality, flexibility, convenience and real-time code function, can satisfy the strict requirements of product packaging, from a long-term point of view, is advantageous to the enterprise cost savings, improve the efficiency of production, the price is very high.
Since printing real-time information on product packaging has become an important part of modern quality management system, especially in food and drug packaging, real-time information can allow manufacturers to track products and provide security for food and drug products. Real-time information allows manufacturers to track products when needed and provide protection in the event of mass recalls. In practice, ttos are commonly used for printing on various materials such as paper, polypropylene, fabric, PVC and plastic. At the same time, flexible packaging is one of the most important categories in the packaging industry, flexible packaging products output value more than half of the packaging industry, such as leisure food, dry goods, baking food, candy, chocolate, slicing frozen fresh food, frozen food, coffee, tea, powder loading goods such as food, medicine bags, metal parts are used in a variety of paper, plastic, flexible packaging, paper, plastic aluminum, TTO is a new type of flexible packaging coding technology, which can provide a very comprehensive, high-quality, wide range of applications of coding solutions, to meet the requirements of product quality and safety supervision and traceability. TTO not only has a very good application effect on flexible packaging, but also provides an efficient coding scheme for electronic supervised code assignment in the electronic supervised code assignment system promoted in China by the intelligent thermal transfer printer, rewinding machine, film cutter and scutter.
(II) TTO’s various advantages will gradually expand the market
Compared with the development of TTO at home and abroad, I found that the sales volume of TTO in the domestic market is still to be improved. As far as I know, TTO has been applied in foreign countries since the 1940s, and TTO technology was invented by SATO Company in Japan and used for label printing. In the last decade or two TTO has been applied to flexible packaging, and it is less than ten years since TTO was really used for flexible packaging printing in The Chinese market. The initial application was in the food packaging industry and is by far the most widely used industry.
There is an industry veteran said, “in production, when we choose intelligent heat transfer printer for identification information, the general prefabricated bag identification information needs to be matched with the paging machine, the installation of synchronizer device to choose intermittent heat transfer printer; In production, if you choose intelligent heat transfer printer and horizontal packaging machine linkage, you need to choose continuous heat transfer printer; If you choose intelligent heat transfer printer and vertical packaging machine linkage, continuous, intermittent heat transfer printer can be met; In the printing choice of intelligent heat transfer printer and cutting machine linkage, you need to choose continuous heat transfer printer, and rewinding machine, labeling machine linkage, you need to choose intermittent heat transfer printer; Production needs to choose different types of ribbon according to the material of the marked object, it is best to choose proofing first, test the adhesion of TTO carbon belt transfer.”
To sum up, I believe that in the future, intelligent heat transfer printer will be more and more developed, technology will be more and more progress towards “multiple printing head, high speed, economy” and other aspects; I believe that in the future, thermal transfer printing coding technology will be more flexible, economical and efficient.