Method for preparing the surface of synthetic cork material for printing

Abstract

Method for preparing the surface of objects made of cork material for printing, in which the objects are subjected to at least one low pressure plasma treatment step. The cork material can be selected from natural cork and synthetic cork, in particular thermoplastic elastomer and/or styrene bloc copolymer. The low pressure plasma comprises a gas or gas mixture selected from O2, N2, NOx, NH3, Ar, He, Ne, CO, CO2, SO2, SO3, CF4 and SF6, at a pressure from 0.01 to 5 mbar. A power supply operating in the KHz, MHz or GHz range is used. The plasma treatment step(s) can be carried out several hours or days before printing the objects made of cork material. The method is applied so as to reach a surface dyne level of at least 50 dynes. The objects can be tumble treated as bulk goods in batches of at least 1000 pieces/batch.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.