TIGERMARK

CABLE MARKING INKS

Tigermark cable marking inks are the most widely used Band marking inks in the UK and Republic of Ireland cable industry today.

We manufacture inks for all the major techniques involved in cable production ;

Band / Ring marking.
Spiral / Striping.
Gravure printing.

We have many years experience in the many areas of printing ink development, and we have devoted a large amount of resources to improving the performance of our cable printing products. This investment in time and money has paid dividends, we have established ourselves as leading supplier of band marking inks to the UK cable industry, and in the last 12 months we have also achieved major supplier status to the the Republic of Ireland cable industry.

A brief summary of the products we can offer to the cable industry is outlined below, more detailed information is available on request.

BAND / RING MARKING INKS

Inks in this range are usually applied by machines such as, Medek & Schorner, Richter or the Gem type nozzle printers.

The main feature of the inks for this application is the low viscosity of the inks combined with the high colour strength. The inks have good opacity for hiding the base compound colour and have to dry very fast, as they can operate at speeds approaching 2000 m/min.

We have spent a lot of time working with both raw material suppliers and customer, improving the performance of the inks for this application, new raw materials and manufacturing techniques have resulted in new ink ranges, often tailored to the specific needs of the customer. We have introduced a new generic range of products for band marking, the T 4000 series, this series incorporates all the features of the original T 640 and T 720 series and improves them in areas such as 'wash-off' and increased machine speeds.

Our most popular band marking inks are tabled below, these are not the full range of products but are a representation of the band marking inks available.

T 640 Series - One of the original ink formulations. Still a popular product, offers excellent performance on PVC and PE, good colours and runs well at speeds up to 1400-1600 m/min.
T 720 Series - Similar to the T 640 series, a bit more forgiving on older machines where hole wear may be a problem.
T 4000 Series - This series utilises the latest raw material technology. Primarily targeted at the high speed production of Telecom and Lan Data cable, this series of inks, which includes the best selling T 4200 and T 4600 series, is performing well at speeds of over 1600 m/min.
T 860 Series - Also know as out 'Cat 5 ' ink, this ink range is limited to 4 colours, Blue, Green, Brown and Orange and is ONLY used in the productions of Lan Data cable, Cat 5 and above. This ink is only applied to white compound and offers several advantages including excellent mileage, low print head wear, good colour strength and good drying. These inks work well at a wide range of operating speeds, from 400-1600 m/min.

Spiral, Striping and Gravure Inks

These inks are very high specification products. Generally, they are applied to specialist compounds with the finished cables having very specific and often very demanding properties. There are in increasing amount of compounds in use today and many of these have to be marked with an identifying mark or text. Our task has been to provide our customers with solutions to their marking problems, and this is an ongoing task.

Some of the products available are outlined below:

T 620 Series - Our standard Gravure ink, available in 11 standard, metallic and customer specific colours, application by direct gravure for PVC and Polyethylene compounds.
T 670 Series - For application by Offset gravure onto PVC and Polyethylene compound. A full range of colours is available as standard.
T 1000 Series - The generic T 1000 Series incorporates several ink ranges for specific applications. The different ink ranges within this series, provides users with solutions to Spiral marking, Striping or Gravure printing of 'difficult to mark' compounds. Some of the compounds that we have been asked to provide inks for are; Nylon, HDPE, LDPE, EPDM, Polypropylene, Rubber, PTFE and Silicone.

OTHER PRODUCTS AVAILABLE FOR THE CABLE INDUSTRY

KETONE-FREE INKS

The Tigermark T 820 Series is a range alcohol-based band marking inks for use on Lan Data cable printing. These inks are capable of running at speeds in excess of 1600 m/min, with greatly reduced print head wear, excellent stability, good drying and minimal wash-off. The absence of the Ketone solvent makes this ink a 'less hazardous' alternative, they are labelled as Highly Flammable but not as Irritant or Harmful.

Our non hazardous ink range is our range of water-based products. These inks will be non hazardous, non flammable alternatives. However, early tests have shown that in order to complete the development program on this range of inks, the customer will play a crucial part. It is essential that the configuration / engineering of the printing process will need to be altered if we are to achieve the current machine speeds for the existing ketone-based inks.

EXTRA-BRIGHT, HIGH VISIBILITY INKS

Within each series, we can provide inks with extra brightness. An added feature of these inks is that they will fluoresce under UV light, enabling easy identification in areas of poor / limited access when illuminated with a UV light source.

REJECT RECOVERY INKS

The T 780 Series has been developed to allow the re-coating of badly marked, wrongly marked or rejected cable. The coating can then be overprinted with any of the inks from our range, allowing recovery of waste cable.

CABLE CLEANER

Tigermark T 656 is used to remove ink jet printing from cable.

PACKAGING

All our inks are supplied in natural polyethylene containers, this allows the user easier product identification as the colour of the product can be clearly seen through the container. Also, and perhaps more importantly, any settlement can be seen and the container shaken until it has been re-constituted. This ensures that none of the important additives are left behind in the container.