A Study of Green Printing Technology Application for Product Value-Added Design

Abstract

Nowadays, the trend of green environmental protection consumption has become an important issue for the public. When buying products, consumers will consider how to minimize the impact on the environment. From the analysis of sales of the scooter in Taiwan in recent years, riding electric scooters has gradually become the mainstream. Take the well-known brand in Taiwan, Gogoro smart scooter as an example. When the consumer group chooses the product from Gogoro smart scooter, they have different experiences in purchasing a scooter. Most of the traditional commercial accessories products are designed and sold by the original factory, but the type is fixed and the selection is low, while other subsidiary products are limited by cost or technical capabilities, and can only be monochrome spray paint, screen printing, etc. Traditionally, the coating used for printing or spraying on the surface of the product needs to be coated multiple times and taking several hours with the baking process. If defective products are produced during the printing or spraying process, the surface coating cannot be directly removed, and the product materials can be recycled for reuse. Moreover, the barrel coating material cannot be refilled after being opened, causing a lot of environmental pollution and waste. Therefore, the customer who chooses Gogoro to tend to choose non-original standard accessories that have green design style, uniqueness, differentiation, diversity, and low environmental impact. In this research combines green printing technology with the electric vehicle accessories market, and develops dual green products through Print Art, Product Value-Added, and Green Design as the concept of design. The product will be integrating diverse design-oriented elements such as art, materials, and technology, applying special environmentally materials and digital printing technology to achieve waste reduction goals, improve overall process efficiency, achieve green product production models, and create circular economy models. Judging from the sales results of these accessories with both design and functionality, the new blue ocean market for electric vehicles has been successfully established. The diversified products and added value created can also extend the upstream and downstream supply chains of products in the future, and integrate product design across cross-skilled areas.

1 Introduction

Green consumption has become an important public concern. Considering the environmental impact and the growing awareness of environmental protection, consumers’ choice of Gogoro, a driving force in the electric scooter market, indicates that they have changed their consumption patterns and switched to buying products that are less harmful or more beneficial to the environment. Nowadays, consumers tend to consider how they can reduce the impact to the environment when they buy products. The analysis of scooters sales in Taiwan in recent years shows that buyers of Gogoro electric scooters have accounted for 23.11% of the market share, indicating that the brand has gradually become the mainstream of the scooter market. This group of consumers act differently from the conventional scooter buyers in that they prefer customized and personalized products to make their vehicle stand out.

2 Literature Reviews

This study is to explore the relationship between “product value-added” and “green printing” and try to find the best strategic model to improve product quality and market differentiation. The literature review summarizes the electric scooter market, green design and digital printing. The first part discusses the development trends of electric scooters. The second part introduces product design and eco-friendly inks. The third part compares and analyzes the differences between UV printing and the traditional printing, and then the three parts are used to sum up the differentiation strategy for product design and profit strategy.

2.1 Development Trends of Electric Scooters

According to survey, the population of 23 million in Taiwan owns 13 million motorcycles, averaging 378 vehicles per square kilometer and making it the country with the highest density of motorcycles in the world. This unique culture of commuting by motorcycles makes Taiwan seen by companies and the government the best potential market for developing electric scooters [1]. In Taiwan, the transportation needs of people lead to a high density of motorcycles, which are convenient but can also cause serious air pollution. The air pollution caused by motorcycles’ exhaust gas affects the quality of the living environment and people’s health. As a result, people’s awareness of environmental protection gradually grows. By speeding up the retirement of traditional scooters and switching to electric scooters, the air pollution may be greatly reduced and the environmental quality can be improved, further making the health conditions of people and quality of life better. The development of electric scooters can achieve the benefits of energy conservation and carbon reduction [2, 3]. Gogoro is the largest brand in Taiwan’s electric scooter market (showed as Fig. 1), it has changed people’s old perception of the conventional electric scooters, such as quick power consumption, slow traveling and charging speeds and others, with improvements. The brand also offers smart technology functions (for example: charging station App, Gogoro App, starting scooters or storage compartment with mobiles phones, and others). In order to reduce air pollution, the government has encouraged people to buy electric scooters by offering subsidies. The retirement of older scooters with two-stroke engines can help people to obtain more subsidies. These measures are to reduce carbon dioxide emissions [4].

Fig. 1.

Gogoro electric scooters [Gogoro website]

2.2 Green Design Lifecycle

Green design refers to the process which fully considers products’ functions, quality, development cycle and cost to optimize all design factors, so that the overall impact on the environment and resources consumption of products during their manufacturing and life-cycle can be minimized [5, 6]. Green design can help us potentially reduce the future environmental impact from products. In the early stages of product design, incorporating the environmental performance as part of the design goals is what makes green design different from the conventional design [7,8,9].

The purpose of green design is to make products meet the requirements of environmental protection, further reducing the impact on the environment. There are many factors related to environmental impact, such as materials selection, reuse, recycling, reduction design, easy disassembly, low toxicity and others. It is unlikely to incorporate all factors of environmental impact into product design to achieve a total green design. Therefore, the purpose of green design is the emphasis on meeting the requirements of environmental protection and selecting factors related to environmental impact, while retaining the functions, quality and life-cycle of products [10]. Green products have the following characteristics:

• 1. Extended life-cycle.

• 2. Energy-saving.

• 3. Recyclable and reusable, it can be reasonably put to sustainable use to protect the limited mineral resources of Earth.

• 4. Avoid waste generation, reduce the amount of waste and the difficulty with disposal.

• 5. Reduce the use of harmful substances, beneficial to environmental protection, and maintain the balance of the ecosystem.

2.3 Digital Printing for Product Design

According to the statistics from 2018 Future of Digital Printing, the global market for digital printing will grow from US$131.5 billion in 2013 to US$187.7 billion in 2018, at an average annual compound growth rate of 7.4%. With the rapid development of inkjet technology, the use of digital printing in the entire printing market is to grow from 9.8% in 2008 to 20.6% in 2018 [11]. The market for traditional lithography is bound to shrink further. The future industry should be based on smart technology, green manufacturing, integrated service innovation and value creation. According to Konica Minolta, the global digital printing market is expected to grow from US$22.18 billion to US$28.85 billion from 2017 to 2023. For Taiwan’s printing industry, the future industry niche and outlook will be optimistic if it can keep up with advanced technology research to meet the demand of different industries and provide diverse innovative services [12, 13]. The UV ink printing technology description as follows:

• 1. UV curing concept: Lights in the field of printing are commonly used for drying. Once 4-color overprinting is completed, the colorants are absorbed by paper materials, and additional drying system is needed. UV printing is the process which uses ultraviolet light, as known as UV curing, to dry the printing ink. UV printing dries quickly and can be applied to a wide range of materials. UV printing ink or materials contain photoinitiator which reacts to specific wavelengths of ultraviolet light. Once the UV light of the curing system actives the photoinitiator of UV ink, they start to generate photopolymerization reactions, forming a hardened film tightly adhered to the surface of the printed materials. This process offers excellent print drying effects for special materials with abnormally smooth surfaces and low absorption and are difficult to dry. UV curing can be used for various types of traditional printing, such as letterpress, flexography, lithography and screen printing. As long as UV ink is used, the main part can be competed with a UV light source.

• 2. UV curing ink is also known as UV ink. The ink layer can be completely cured after being irradiated with UV rays. UV rays with different wavelengths and energy levels can form films on ink and make the ink dry. Different UV spectra can generate different levels of energy and polymerize monomers in different ink binders into polymers, so the color films of UV ink have good mechanical and chemical properties. UV ink consists of binders, pigments, reactive diluents, photoinitiators and auxiliaries. Binders are one of the main ingredients and they account for 30% to 50% of the content of ink, and they are the main substance for ink to form films. Many types of ink with special effects need to be thick to offer good performance, and they are foaming ink, wrinkle ink and others. As screen printing ink tends to be thick, there are many special UV screen printing inks, which have characteristics such as containing no volatile solvents, no odor, quick curing speed, tough cured films, strong water resistance, resistance to solvent scrubbing, good adhesion and many colors.

3 Integration of Marketing and Technology of Printing Applications

This research aims at the current combination of parts and UV printing in the domestic electric vehicle market, discusses its development profile and process application, summarizes its advantages and disadvantages and market potential, and analyzes the energy of existing technologies. Likelihood and direction.

3.1 Market Segmentation of New Digital Printing Applications

With the continuous improvement in productivity, reliability and cost efficiency of digital printing, the simplification of plate making further enables digital printing to produce highly customized accessories. The innovation of inkjet technology and the adoption of environmentally friendly materials drive the strong growth of digital printing. In the future, more industry operators and resources will be committed to optimize the production scale and reduce unit costs. Maintaining competitive advantages becomes future challenge for manufacturers. Digital printing provides printing solutions for more diverse materials and non-planar objects and can be widely used in daily life. The signs of market demand show that buyers’ demand for customized and fast-printing accessories will continue to rise, and the market of personalized prints also continues to expand, so the market opportunities for digital printing will be rosy. The printing industry nowadays, whether it involves traditional crafts or the infusion of digital and multimedia communication technologies, certainly has much room for more exploration. he product supply chain to other industries and develop accessories products that are different from the past. The target design purpose of this study is to focus on the accessories design for Gogoro 1, 2, 3 and VIVA, Aeon Ai-one, PGO UR1, etc. (showed as Fig. 2). And it including two requirements: 1) customization design to attract users 2) customization market is growing, as follows:

Fig. 2.

Target electric scooters: Gogoro 1, 2, 3 and VIVA, Aeon Ai-one, PGO UR1 (from left to right)

• 1. The customization design to attract users: The relationship between cross-domain technology and printing is becoming more and more inseparable. In the aspect of market development, the increasing popularity of digital printing enables prints buyers to not follow the minimum order quantity requirements to keep a large inventory. The print quantity can be more flexible, and there is room for more customization, which leads to the increasing demand for further processing after personalized printing. The shrinking quantity of traditional printing in the prints market has become a common trend around the world. Prints incorporating design, such as soft packaging, color boxes, metal inkjet and its post-processing and others, continue to grow due to economic growth and the active consumer activities.

• 2. The customization market is growing: It is an innovation that emphasizes individualization, sophisticated taste, environmental protection and differentiation through materials, manufacturing process and product design. It also has the following digital printing technology characteristics which create product segmentation and differentiation to meet the market demand for small orders and customization. There are three reasons included a) high production efficiency b) universality of materials c) Print and cut capabilities, as follows:

  • a) High production efficiency: With the characteristics of UV ink, which can be immediately cured after being irradiated by UV lamps, products can be applied with protective films, cutting and other post-processing procedures to meet orders with a short lead time. No drying is required, which can greatly reduce the production time.

  • b) Universality of materials: Non-processed paper or fabric materials that cannot be printed with solvent-based inks can be used now, expanding the types of materials available. Non-processed and inexpensive materials now can be used, which reduces production costs.

  • c) Print and cut capabilities: The ID cut function reduces cutting errors. The continuous positioning and reading functions reduce the number of procedures for operators. There are full positioning and zero-positioning cutting which emphasizes productivity, zero blank space positioning which prioritizes precision or center positioning, and a variety of positioning points can be selected to meet the requirements of different tasks.

3.2 Digital Printing

The generation of pollutants is a problem for almost every industry. For the sustainability of the living environment and industries, the prevention and control of industrial pollution are key topics for discussion among industries. Therefore, understanding the sources of industrial pollution and the characteristics and components of pollutants is the priority for improving the pollution conditions. Printing ink is currently the biggest source for pollution in the printing industry. The global emissions of pollution by volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from printing ink have reached hundreds of thousands of tons every year. These VOCs can form greenhouse effects more serious than that of carbon dioxide. Under sunlight, the VOCs can form oxides and photochemical smog. Using the traditional screen-printing method as an example, the pollution of ink or the waste ink discharged from the cleaning of screens can cause serious pollution impacting the environment. For the purpose of reducing pollution to the environment, the development of environmentally friendly printing is gradually being valued by the public, and consumers are also leaning toward buying products printed with eco-friendly ink. Many printing-related regulations have been added to the environmental regulations in many countries to limit the VOCs released by the printing industry. This goes to show that the government and industry have paid more and more attention to the pollution and human health related to printing inks. So, this study applied the UV printing technology of UV curing inkjet and soft ink, as follow:

• a) UV Curing Inkjet

  • 1. Shorten process and improve efficiency: UV curable ink can be cured instantly when it is exposed to ultraviolet (UV light) rays. This omits the drying procedures after the printing, and other post-processing tasks can immediately start (showed as Fig. 3).

    Fig. 3.

    

    Can reduce 90% of manufacturing time

  • 2. Use of eco-friendly ink: The newly developed nickel-free ink (LUV-175) produces almost no VOCs and emits less chemicals indoors.

  • 3. Suitable for diverse materials: UV curable ink, which does not require drying time, can be printed on PVC materials, tarpaulins, fabrics on which solvent-based inks or latex printing cannot be applied, paper without an absorbing layer and PET films.

• b) Soft Ink

  • 1. Solvent-based inks: Ink is secured by impregnating PVC-based materials and being dried by evaporating organic solvents. Solvent components need to be evaporated, which requires drying time. If the substrate is not PVC or does not contain PVC, the ink cannot be secured.

  • 2. UV ink: Ink is cured by the exposure to UV (ultraviolet) light. As the ink can get cured immediately, protective films and other post-processing works can be applied on after printing. Specialized substrates must be used for the printing to be applied on a variety of materials (Fig. 4).

    Fig. 4.

    

    UV-LED print mechanism

3.3 Product Value-Added

Products all pass the cross-cut adhesion test and are EU eco-certified (certificates attached). In order to meet the needs of various industries, product design and UV digital inkjet printing technology are incorporated to provide a full range of soft and hard printing. The core technology includes mold development and sheet metal applications. Product development has covered both the appearance and functionality. Mainly focusing on electric scooters, the design aims to achieve personalized components without damaging vehicle body structure. Besides retaining the original shape, the approach can add varieties to the appearance and functions, so consumers can enjoy the benefits of unique and personalized components. The abovementioned core technologies add product breadth and improve the added value via UV eco-friendly ink and clear ink.

• 1. The Eco-friendly ink products that have obtained GREENGUARD GOLD certification, GREENGUARD is a certification implemented by a US-based third-party safety science UL company, and it operates environmental certification related to chemical substances emitted in indoor spaces. It is based on fair empirical scientific data, and products that emit fewer chemicals in indoor spaces and are more eco-friendly can obtain the certificate. There are two types of certificates, regular and Gold, and the criteria for Gold certification are a lot more rigorous than that of the regular certification. VOC-free UV ink can be immediately cured with a UV lamp, so it does not emit VOCs and is more friendly to the environment (VOCs stand for volatile organic compounds, which can cause air pollution) (Fig. 5).

  Fig. 5.

  

  Certificate of compliance

• 2. Use UV clear ink can improve the added value of printed materials. It can produce two kinds of printing effects: “Gloss surface” to enhance vividness and sophistication and “Matte surface” to have a understated and no-gloss effect. The gloss printing makes printed materials look sophisticated and more eye-catching. It can give a surface different texture effects and undulations to show its uniqueness. Products can be presented in many ways. Products can be presented in many ways. For example, the overlay printing with color and clear inks, using only clear ink to print on black and clear materials or printing on materials with a matte surface. There is no need to use other equipment for clear ink printing. This UV clear ink had some benefits, such as: a) The process is about 20% faster than the existing machine. b) Receive orders to produce at the industry’s highest productivity. c) Support the creation of higher added value. d) High performance inks realize a wider range of product applications. e) Clear ink printing demonstrates sophistication and good design sense. f) Glossy printing, matte printing and thick film printing (Fig. 6).

  Fig. 6.

  

  UV clear ink

3.4 Product Design Results

According to the above instructions, combined with printing art, product value-added, and green design, the integration of art, materials, technology and other multi-oriented design elements, the application of special environmental protection materials and digital printing technology, to achieve the goal of reducing waste, improve the overall process efficiency, to achieve green product production mode, and create a circular economy model. To do not hurt the locomotive, retain the body-based, design a variety of motor car spare parts, such as color spray to stop the slide pedal, car front modeling trim, color spray cylinder head, license plate protection base plate, color spray car cover… and so on, bring into today’s consumer favorite customer design, increase uniqueness, enhance product value (show as Fig. 7).

Fig. 7.

Design process

4 Conclusion

The implementation of this study can enhance the benefits of digital economy, smart process management and provide speedy customization to meet customer demand and the needs of heterogeneous markets. It can create more output value, refine the design and development of prints and reinforce the mastery of the suitability of different substrates. The introduction of technology in image color processing, UV printing, specialized printing and digital printing can add value to the functional innovation in the domain of electric scooters and their related products and improve the friendliness of developed products in the market. Connections between the academic research and development and the industry’s practical needs can be made. The study can define the rights, obligations and division of labor, share and integrate the results to engage in commercialization, further connecting the supply chains of diverse industries and customer needs. The innovative technologies and eco-friendly raw materials of digital printing, combined with visual aesthetics, personalized printing and functional design of industrial components, can be extended to other businesses outside the electric scooters market by adopting the cross-domain applications and other commercialization technologies. The product development incorporating the joint efforts of industry practitioners can help both students and practitioners to develop more job skills in the areas of printing, design, production and e-commerce activities through this program. The value-added design for metals can improve the value of components and develop products that could not be realized in the consumer market of the past, which emphasizes market differentiation to have personalized parts that can attract consumers.