Atmospheric Plasma Spot Treatment Applications

When packagers are faced with label adhesion challenges flame and plasma surface treaters are often used to increase bond strength. Label adhesion problems occur because many of the container, lid and cap materials used in packaging are chemically inert and non receptive to bonding with glue.

How your packaging looks on the store shelf can make or break your company’s success. So it’s no wonder packagers invest so much in ensuring their package appears flawless when it leaves the factory. Atmospheric plasma and flame surface treaters can play a significant role in helping you catch your consumer’s eye.

There are a number of applications in the optics field where plasma and flame surface treatment are used to improve adhesion. Treatment of specialty lenses prior to coating helps prepare glass and polymer surfaces for successful coating adhesion.

The automotive industry is at the forefront of using new materials and technologies to reduce cost and improve performance while striving for green manufacturing processes. Perhaps that’s why the automotive industry is one of the most aggressive users of in-line atmospheric plasma and flame plasma surface treatment technologies.

Atmospheric plasma systems activate surfaces and increase surface energy levels to promote bonding of aqueous inks, coatings and adhesives to provide excellent abrasion and smudge resistance.

Atmospheric plasma surface treaters are used for many applications in the electronics industry. Plasma’s ability to modify surfaces and impart surface functionality economically improves manufacturing operations.

Atmospheric plasma is ideal for improving adhesion on a wide variety of materials used in the medical industry. Learn how blown arc air plasma, blown-ion plasma, variable chemistry plasma, and flame plasma systems can be used to clean surfaces, promote adhesive bonding and enable printing on polymers of all shapes and sizes

Surface Treatment is widely used for assembly applications because of its effectiveness, low cost and environmental friendliness. Common plasma and flame treatment assembly applications include: automotive head lamps, medical devices such as needle hubs, and household appliance gaskets and components.

Materials used in folder gluers to produce folding cartons include polycoated, polybacked, virgin kraft board, specially coated materials, UV lacquered surfaces and recyclable materials. These types of folding carton surfaces exhibit varied receptivity to conventional bonding processes. Plasma treatment is highly effective at functionalizing these surfaces to improve productivity and reduce operational costs.

Pretreatment removes rolling oils and other surface contaminations from aluminium and steel foils that result from slitting and rewinding. This prepares the surface for soldering and brazing, while eliminating the uses of batch chemical process.

Plasma and flame surface treating is commonly used in the packaging, medical and automotive field. However increasing requirements for improved adhesion performance in the construction industry is now creating a demand for atmospheric plasma and flame surface treatment solutions.

The future of economical solar cell manufacturing is becoming dependent on new in-line process technology for high speed continuous production. Enercon has pioneered the use of surface treatment in the converting industry and now PV cell manufacturers are quickly adapting this technology to their processes.

Atmospheric plasma cleans and functionalizes surfaces of three dimensional photovoltaics module components such as polymer-based junction boxes to improve potting adhesive bonding. It also promotes bonding to glass, silicon wafers and aluminum structures.

Generally, plastics have chemically inert and nonporous surfaces with low surface tensions. This makes them nonreceptive to bonding with inks, adhesives, coatings, and other substrates. Corona, Plasma and Flame surface treating improve the adhesion of plastics.

Atmospheric plasma treaters can significantly increase the interfacial adhesion characteristics of composite structures. The types of composite structures than can benefit from atmospheric plasma are emerging rapidly. Many new plastic nanocomposites have offered valuable properties, such as heat resistance, chemical resistance, structural/stress strength and weather resistance. As a low temperature solution, plasma treaters offer an economical and highly effective means to achieve improved bond strength of nanocomposites to each other and to virgin materials.

The use of plasma and flame surface modification improves aluminum grain definition, contributes to achieving a specified chemically functionalization, and promotes mechanical/chemical bond strength. During surface treating the aluminum is cleaned of the rolling oil deposits and breaks down oxides distributed during processing.

Many packagers rely on flame or plasma treatment to prepare their bottles for labeling and marking. Surface treatment cleans, etches and functionalizes surfaces to improve receptivity to adhesives, inks and coatings.

The manufacturing of virtually everything from toothbrushes to autoparts can benefit from the use of atmospheric plasma treatment and flame treatment during assembly and decorating operations. In many cases material handling and automation of the surface treatment process is required to achieve productivity goals. Enercon partners with specialty equipment integrators for their automation expertise.

Marking on all types of pipes can be assisted by plasma surface treating. Improvements in adhesion, legibility and longevity of printing, marking and coding can all be achieved. Pipes of virtually any size can be treated prior to printing and treatment further enables more sophisticated printing such as computer generated variable data.

In-line atmospheric plasma and flame surface treaters are used to improve adhesion of adhesives and coatings on a wide variety of plastics, composites, wood, glass and metals. 

Plasma and flame surface treating is commonly used in the packaging, medical and automotive field. However increasing requirements for improved adhesion performance in the construction industry is now creating a demand for atmospheric plasma and flame surface treatment solutions.

The task of optimizing printing adhesion can be difficult, primarily because of the many process variables which require control. There are six major printing/decorating processes, each distinguished by the method in which ink and an image are transferred to a substrate, and by the method by which the ink and image are conveyed for adhesion to a substrate. Almost all surfaces require preparation to establish minimum adhesion requirements. This step is known as pretreatment and post-treatment, and influenced by the base material surface receptivity of the ink layer.