The allure of printed packages and labels that change colors to reflect product temperatures has been expanded. Chromatic Technologies Inc. (CTI) has launched what it touts as the packaging industry’s first thermochromic ink for use in solvent ink applications. CTI’s achievement represents a technological breakthrough, especially for the flexible packaging industry, and is a technological breakthrough many thought could never be done.

Solvent inks for printing are used by over 95 percent of flexible packaging suppliers. Prior to CTI’s development of Solvent Thermochromic Ink, printers were forced to run water-based specialty technology. Using water-based inks inside a solvent plant created challenges (1) affecting efficiency and economics for customers, (2) increasing set-up times as well as set-up, cleaning and (3) affecting solvent recapture. 

CTI’s Solvent Thermochromic Ink also offers the advantage of delivering much stronger color compared to water-based inks, which heretofore often required more than one printing station to achieve target color density. Solvent Thermochromic Ink is delivered as a one-part, finished ink to customers. 

Prior attempts at using solvent thermochromic inks failed due to the solvents attacking the encapsulated chemistry of the printing process.  In some cases, ink customers would wait to mix a thermochromic concentrate with a solvent immediately prior to printing.  As such, the ink must be typically applied in the next eight hours, and everything that is unused was thrown away, resulting in waste of typically 30 percent.

“CTI had a technology breakthrough inventing solvent-thermochromic inks that can be delivered as a single, finished, print-ready ink which maintains a shelf-life of 90 days,” says Lyle Small, CTI’s founder and president. “This new technology just made a lot of production and economic headaches disappear for our customers and creates a pipeline of innovation they can bring to market.”

In addition to thermochromic, CTI now offers a suite of solvent-ready specialty ink technologies including glow-in-dark, photochromic, hydrochromic, pressure-activated and reveal inks.

During August 2019, CTI is offering free solvent trials to qualified customers. Trial requests can be submitted at [email protected] or 719-592-1557.