Radio frequency card printing method (1)

In the early 1990s, the use of magnetic cards and IC cards in China was not widespread, and printing and production of cards were mostly conducted in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Therefore, the price of card production at that time was relatively high. Today, 10 years later, magnetic cards, contactless IC cards, and RF cards have been widely used in our lives: IC telephone booths, which are everywhere on the streets, ATMs that are open 24 hours, and shopping cards in shopping malls and supermarkets. . Now according to the requirements of the development of the national information industry, the “Three Gold Project” represented by the Urban Public Transport Card Project, the Civil Social Security Card Project, and the Finance Card has been promoted in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Dalian. Over time, The circulation of a card will increase exponentially.

According to the current status of urban card issuance in Shanghai: Because of restrictions on the use of traffic cards, generally non-contact RF cards are used. When the card is in use, the card does not need to be in contact with the card reader. Simply place the card on the card reader. At 5 to 10 cm, automatic settlement and data processing can be realized. At present, the chip and system functions of the card have been improved day by day, but the manufacturing cost of the card body is relatively high, which hinders the card promotion speed to some extent. One of the main reasons for the high card body cost is the cost of the card chip; the other reason is that the waste rate of the card printing is high. The company is a card printer for the Shanghai One Card Project. We hope that the following content will help RF card users to consider the cost of printing the RF card.

At present, there are two types of printing methods for radio frequency cards in the industry: pre-card printing and post-card printing. Now we briefly introduce these two printing methods.

1, before the card printing

The printing process is arranged before the chip and antenna package.

This printing method is usually a full-page printing, that is, the number of cards on the printing layer is equal to the number of inlay chips on the inlay. The material of the printing layer is PVC or PET. After printing, the laminate is laminated and punched into cards. The printing method can cover the protective film outside the printing layer, so that a color photograph can be directly printed on the card surface, or can be directly coated with a protective varnish after the printing is completed to avoid wear of the card surface pattern.

In general, the thickness of the RF card is controlled between 0.80mm and 0.84mm, so the thickness of the printed layer is generally between 0.12mm and 0.15mm. The typesetting cursor needs to be placed in the layout, and the position accuracy of the cursor printing will directly affect the punching accuracy of the card. If the deviation is too large, the coil will be cut off, resulting in scrap.

The material of the print layer is usually PVC or PET. These materials cannot be dried by absorbing ink. We use UV ink (ultraviolet light solid ink) for printing. UV ink can be dried within 0.5 seconds through ultraviolet light, so the printing speed can be achieved. 6000 sheets/hour or more. The use of ultraviolet light drying must pay attention to the matching of the illumination time and the printing speed. Since the material to be printed is thin, the light heating time is too long (more than 2 seconds), the material will shrink and deform, the distance between the card and the card will change, and the position will be changed during punching. The deviation causes the coil to be cut off and is scrapped. Conversely, insufficient illumination time will cause the ink to dry out incompletely. After lightly rubbing, the ink will be wiped off, causing the screen to be damaged or cause the material to adhere.