innovation highlight
DRY SAFE no more drying out
Won´t work quite impossible that´s the constant cry when it comes to developing ink systems. The DRY SAFE feature used in all our products is a fine example of how things that seem at first sight to be incompatible can ultimately be combined. In concrete terms, our ink pens need their ink to dry as quickly as possible once it is applied, but on the other hand the pen has to have as long an open-shelf time (dry-safe period) as possible (i.e. over a period of several days the writer must be able to write immediately once its cap has been taken off).
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To solve this problem, it helps to take a look at nature or, more precisely, at botany, where there are quite enough examples of an effective protection mechanism against drying out. Thus both fruits, such as apples or lemons, and vegetable shoots protect themselves by forming a coat of wax on their surface and it is this very principle which we have succeeded in transferring to products in our range.
Once the cap is off, the solvent evaporates (e.g. alcohol in Lumocolor permanent), but when our DRY SAFE inks are used a layer of wax is formed quickly on the surface of the tip. This wax coating is not visible to the naked eye and forms mainly on the surface of the fabric tip, i.e. it does not penetrate into the porous material of the tip itself. In this way, unseen by its user, this protective layer can break up as soon as the pen is used again and the ink flow starts again in the familiar way.
Using this principle hardly affects the drying time of the ink (i.e. the time it takes until you cant smudge whats on the paper), and so what seemed at first sight to be incompatible requirements (open-shelf time and drying time) are both fulfilled.
If no wax coating is formed, a pen or other writer has no protection at all against loss of solvent via the tip. DRYSAFE technology significantly reduces evaporation of solvent, but cannot completely stop it i.e. sooner or later even the best STAEDTLER pen will dry out if it doesnt have a cap. Depending on the ink used and the pens format, however, this may take up to two weeks.
Thus DRYSAFE adds an important additional feature to our pens and writers, giving the user greater reliability: to take just one example, they will not dry out immediately if the cap is not quite properly fixed. The ink technology described here is patented in many countries world-wide and is one example of our core expertise in ink-system development.
Source: Kunststoff-Netzwerk-Franken e. V.
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