Printed Decor Paper is a type of paper that is printed with different patterns like wood grain, marble, textile or various tree pattern by image reproduction or manual methods. This decorative paper is used in furniture making as a surface layer and it plays the important role of providing decorative patterns and preventing glue bleeding from the bottom layer. The decorative performance of the furniture is mainly decided by the procedure of printing.
In the rotogravure printing process, the color of the decor paper is mainly determined by the ink composition. The ink is a kind of water-based pigment and the diluents are the main additives that control the color and viscosity of the ink. Different diluents have different effects on the hue, especially the blue one. For example, the diluent with higher concentration reduces the saturation of the blue hue, but it increases the viscosity. In the present study, different types of diluents with different chemical functional groups were tested on a sample of a colored decor paper to understand their effects on the color and viscosity of the resulting ink.
The raw base paper for decor papers is a high grade special paper with grammage of 70-85GSM. It must be capable of high-speed printing and melamine resin impregnation. It must also have good smoothness and opacity. The quality of the raw base paper directly affects the color consistency of finished decor papers. The color consistency of decor papers has a great influence on the melamine resin impregnation, lamination and the appearance of finished furniture panels.
During the printing process, the decorative paper passes through 1-5 inking and drying processes to print the desired pattern. The number of cylinders depends on the complexity of the pattern, with simple stripes and wavy patterns requiring only 2 plate cylinders, while wood grain patterns usually require 5 cylinders. Each cylinder is embossed with a shallow or deep design. When the cylinder is rotated, it deposits ink on the surface of the paper in a certain pattern. The ink deposited on the paper is absorbed by the fibers of the paper to form the color pattern of the decorative paper.
The reflected light of the ink on the paper surface is a specular reflection, which looks bright and glossy. The color of the decorative paper is mainly produced by this reflective phenomenon. It is difficult to measure the dry color density of the decorative paper until 30-60 minutes after printing, when the ink has completely dried. The printed color can then be measured with a density meter equipped with a polarizer. The measured dry color density of the decorative paper is usually lower than the wet color density, as the ink has not fully dried at that time. The reason for this is that the reflected light contains a white light component, which decreases the saturation of the main color light.