Permanent Marking of Brand On GI Wires

Challenge Details

We supply galvanized wires (GI) of varying sizes to our immediate customers who further process these to make finished products such as chain links, barbed wires & farming wire. These finished wires are used in places which have harsh environmental conditions like rains, bright sun light, dust, rubbing by animals etc. 

We print branding and product specific information on each of these wires through inkjet printing at an interval of 1m, before these wires are shipped to our customers. However, when these wires are processed further to make the finished products this marking gets erased, which is undesirable. 

The size of the wires ranges from 1.60 mm to 4.88 mm diameter. The production speed varies from 60 m/min to 120 m/min & coating thickness (coating of galvanization) varies from 60 Gsm (grams per meter) to 275 Gsm. 

We print our brand logo and product specific information on all of these wires every 1m by inject printer. We use commercially available ink for printing.

To make our brand visible for a longer time, we tried using different types of commercially available ink, but didn’t get the desired results.  The marking gets dull and/or erased even when it is rubbed repeatedly for about 50-60 times. Laser printing was also found to be unsuitable as it was not able to print at the speeds required. We also tried Laser Engraving, but it was found that engraving was peeling off the Zinc coating.

We are looking for a solution which will enable us to print/display our brand and product specific information on the wires in such a way that

• It will not get spoiled/deteriorated when the wires are bent & twisted as required during the finishing operations 
• It will not get dull or lose any information from any damage.
• It will last for at least three years of its use in field. 
• It should also enable us to identify counterfeit products. 

Minimum conditions the solution has to satisfy:

• It should be able to print at the speeds, quantity and wire sizes mentioned above 
• The cost of the whole set up should not exceed Rs. 10 lacs
• It should be customizable  
• Solution should have a prototype for demostration and not just an idea

• Link to printing process
• Ink getting erased after repeated rubbing