The Amazing Shrink Inks

Alcoa, whose R&D group evaluates various shrink film inks, tests all of its inks in a pilot plant before they go to the printing operation. In the test runs, inks are printed on a 14˝-wide web, run through a four-color gravure press where Winheim checks for adhesion, water resistance, blocking, COF, and retained solvents, among others. Then, one week later, he rechecks those properties. "Before our printing operation runs its first yard, an intense development program has been done to scale up the new product," he said.