Tech notes

Adhesives notes cover the UV-curable adhesive system: viscosity windows, anilox volume calibration, primer chemistry for low-energy substrates and the trade-offs between adhesive lay-down and overprint compatibility. Read these first if you are qualifying a new substrate family or moving between coated and uncoated stock.

Color notes document spectrophotometric workflows: CxF/X-4 colour data preparation, Pantone metallic spot-colour matching using base foil plus tinted overprint, brand-spec ΔE tolerances and the metameric pitfalls of viewing metallic surfaces under non-D50 lighting. Useful for prepress and brand-side colour managers.

Process notes cover the press itself: nip pressure tuning, UV dose calibration across mercury and LED systems, web-tension management on narrow-web label presses, and the diagnostic logic for pinholing, ghosting, foil pickout and dust accumulation. These are written for press operators and shift leads.

Substrates notes are practical guidance for printing on a specific material family — uncoated paperboards, BOPP and PE films, metallised board, recycled content stock. They explain when a primer is needed, what surface energy targets to hit and how to interpret the substrate datasheet.

Sustainability and compliance notes summarise third-party studies and regulatory positions: repulpability under ISEGA and PTS protocols, food-contact migration under EU 10/2011, REACH and RoHS posture, recyclability flagging in extended producer responsibility schemes.

Every note is drafted by an applications engineer, technically reviewed by a chemist or a senior process engineer in a different team, and copy-edited by our documentation lead. Notes that contain operating windows or compliance claims also pass through the QA function. Authors are named on the full PDF (not on the summary card) so you can follow up with the right person if you have a question.

When a note is materially updated — for instance, a new substrate added to a compatibility matrix or a process window tightened after a fresh study — we publish a revision with the same TN code, increment the revision suffix and add a release note explaining what changed. Previous revisions stay accessible for twelve months so converters mid-qualification do not have to chase a moving spec.

Tech notes that solve real converter problems are the most valuable, and they almost always come from a customer question we have answered three or four times. If you have a recurring issue, a non-obvious substrate or a regulatory question that is not covered here, write to our applications team via the contact form. We will tell you within a week whether the topic is on the roadmap, whether it is being researched, or whether the existing answer is private to a customer engagement and we cannot publish it.