Color Masterbatch

KingChroma can use several kinds of color masterbatches to formulate specific colors for small amount of customers, but without the guidance of the company’s technicians, you should not use several kinds of color masterbatches together, and you should not mix the color masterbatches produced by different companies, in order to avoid incompatibility and loss.

The production process of color masterbatches can be divided into seven steps:
1. Weighing: Color powder, carrier, lubricant, dispersant and other additives are weighed according to the portion required by the process, the higher the precision the better.
2. Mixing: put the weighed additives into the high mixer in order according to the process flow.
3. Extruder: set the temperature of the carrier according to the color masterbatch, keep warm for a certain period of time before starting the machine, and speed up from slow to fast.
4. Pull the strip: after the mouth mold out of the material hand holding the strip of material at an even speed to the pelletizer assured that the movement, halfway through the blow-drying machine or suction drying machine.
5. Cutting and pulling: when the material strip reaches the feeding mouth of the granulator, slowly increase the speed of the granulator.
6. Packing: Packing according to customer’s demand
7. Subsequent adjustment: wait for the whole set of equipment are normal operation for a period of time, in order to adjust the speed to the normal production speed

The use of master batch color is very simple, only need to be mixed with resin particles according to the specified ratio and hand mixing.

The following issues should be noted in the operation of the equipment:
1.1 The mixing chamber of the injection molding machine or extruder generally has several temperature areas, in which the temperature of the section near the falling mouth should be slightly higher, this is to make the color masterbatch melt quickly after entering the mixing chamber, and mix with the plastic resin as soon as possible, which is conducive to the color masterbatch pigment being in a well-dispersed state in the products.

1.2 Apply back pressure to the injection molding machine, which can improve the mixing effect of the screw and benefit the dispersion of the pigment, the side effect of applying back pressure is to slow down the injection speed.

1.3 Increase the temperature of the die head of the extruder appropriately, which can increase the brightness of the products.

In most cases it does. However, in some cases, coloring with masterbatches is more economical than coloring with color powders. The reason is that the colorist can achieve the coloring effect of a higher-priced pigment by combining several lower-priced pigments.

Consider also the following two phenomena:
(1) In many cases, the pigments chosen by plastic product manufacturers in color matching with color powder are not the most economical ones, and it is very common that due to the lack of familiarity with the pigments, repeated trials are made in color matching, resulting in the waste of manpower and materials. This problem does not exist when using color masterbatch.

(2) The grade of the products colored with color masterbatch and the products colored with color powder is completely different, and their selling price is also higher, and the higher selling price is often higher than the increased cost of using color masterbatch, so the color masterbatch can create “profit” instead. From this point of view, in some cases, the use of color masterbatch coloring than the use of color powder coloring to come to the “economy”.

Color masterbatches generally do not need to be dried and can be used directly, except for ABS and NY color masterbatches, which should be dried according to the regular process.

The basis for determining the use ratio of color masterbatch is to obtain satisfactory coloring effect. As long as the surface of the product is uniform in color tone and free of streaks and spots, it can be approved.

Take Kingchroma masterbatch as an example, the ratio can be chosen as below:

1:100 Unless the mixing property of the equipment is very good, the phenomenon of uneven dispersion of pigment is likely to occur, and it is generally not recommended for customers to use this ratio.

However, some customers especially want to use this ratio of color masterbatch due to the price pressure. For the sake of customers, we also produce more concentrated color masterbatch with this low ratio, and the dispersion of pigment can generally meet the requirements.

1:50 is used for plastic products with general coloring requirements, PE, PP color masterbatches use this ratio more often.

1:33-1:25 is used for PO products with high coloring requirement, ABS products with low or general coloring requirement.

1:20 Used for advanced plastic products, including PO, ABS, can be widely used in injection molding, blow molding, spinning and other processes.

Above 1:20 is generally used for coloring of advanced cosmetic containers, more often used in small injection molding machines.

Commonly used color classification methods are as follows:
Classification by carrier: such as PE masterbatch, PP masterbatch, ABS masterbatch, PVC masterbatch, EVA masterbatch, etc.
Classified by use: such as injection molding masterbatch, blow molding masterbatch, spinning masterbatch, and so on.

Each variety can be divided into different grades, such as:
1. Advanced injection color masterbatch: used for cosmetic packaging boxes, toys, electrical appliance shells and other advanced products.

2. Ordinary injection color masterbatch: used for general daily-use plastic products, industrial containers and so on.

3. Advanced blow molding masterbatch: used for blow molding coloring of ultra-thin products.

4. Ordinary blow molding masterbatch: used for blow molding coloring of general packaging bags and woven bags.

5. Spinning masterbatch: used for spinning and dyeing of textile fiber. Masterbatch pigment has fine particle, high concentration, strong coloring power, good heat resistance and light resistance.

6. Low-grade masterbatches: used in the manufacture of low-grade products that do not require high color quality, such as garbage cans, low-grade containers and so on.

7. Special masterbatches: a masterbatch made of the same plastic as the carrier according to the plastic species specified by the user for the product. For example, PP masterbatch and ABS masterbatch choose PP and ABS as carriers respectively.

8.General masterbatch: It also uses a certain resin (usually PE with low melting point) as carrier, but it can be used for coloring other resins besides its carrier resin.