Finishers and Decorators
The final touch of a decanter, bottle or accessory, the finishing touches make the product unique, and a vector of a brand image.
Transparent, lacquered or frosted, the finishing touches can be of several kinds: silk-screen printing, pad printing, hot stamping, metallized, or engraved. Explanations below.
Lacquering
For several years now, glass colored in the mass, whose technique is still used in particular in semi-automatic, has been replaced by the coloring of bottles by lacquering, also called spray painting or spraying.
This automatic process, called lacquering line, allows to obtain on the bottles, a great variety of plain, graded or multiple tints or even colored or colorless frosted renderings, or to vary the opacity or the touch, and to imitate other materials (concrete, slate). It is also possible, thanks to tools, to perform partial lacquering.
This technology has evolved considerably over the last 10 years, including on the environmental level, by replacing, in the vast majority of cases, solvent-based inks with water-soluble inks. Lacquering requires a real amount of expertise to meet customer expectations: colorists, adjusters and operators must ensure a perfectly homogeneous production, with a few exceptions where a random appearance may be requested.
Rigorous tests are carried out to test the resistance of the lacquering to chemical or mechanical aggression in order to ensure the longevity of the decoration. These tests also apply to other forms of decoration by adding material.
Metallization
Although it is similar to a form of lacquering, metallization uses very different processes and products that require significant investment. It is also a process which requires upstream to have glass products without any surface defect because these would then be very strongly amplified, like for example a plain black lacquering.
Screen printing, pad printing, hot stamping, decalcomania, sublimation, digital printing, others…
These different types of marking make it possible to print any form of text or drawing on the bottles by adding material.
Screen printing consists in depositing on the object to be decorated a quantity of organic, UV or enamel ink through a stencil called a screen; it is used for shapes of revolution (cylindrical or developed) and flat areas.
When it is necessary to decorate concave shapes, the pad printing process is used to perfectly match the shapes.
The processes of decalcomania, sublimation or digital printing are used in case of complex polychromatic decoration.
Gluing – Dressing of bottles
Dressing bottles with other materials has always existed more or less, if only with ribbons, but this trend has become stronger in the last ten years. Fashion trends are moving towards the sophistication of products and can lead to adapting a metallic, plastic or metal-plastic accessory or even fabric or wood on a bottle. This fitting of accessories can be done with automatic machines or manually.