Consequently, throughout its history, ARMOR has acquired a depth of experience in the selection of raw materials, the formulation of ink, and in its manufacture on an industrial scale.

ARMOR’s Thermal Transfer Industrial Expertise Centre located in France is the sole ink production centre; here ink is developed, ground and coated onto PET film. The same site brings together numerous different skills in fields as varied as Chemistry, Industrialisation, Production, Automation Technology, IT, Logistics, Quality, HSE, Human Resources and Purchasing.

All finished products in the range are then exclusively processed at Group production sites, close to our customers. Each site brings together a vast array of skills such as metrology, applications, process and quality control.

Having perfected the whole production process right up to the point of dispatch, ARMOR’s attainment of wide-ranging expertise makes it able to advise, direct and support its customers in their own application of Thermal Transfer technology.

Beyond the outstanding production facilities, the Expertise Centre is one of the few European manufacturing sites to have received the triple certification of ISO 9001 for Quality, ISO 14001 for the Environment and OHSAS 18001 for Health & Safety. Most of our other production sites have ISO 9001 certification.

For customers, it’s the guarantee of quality manufacturing from top to bottom.

Our commitments in the fields of People and the Environment go even further and are manifested by the introduction of the first 100% solvent-free manufacturing process: SOLFREE! A technological revolution made possible by the complete control of the industrial process from A to Z.

The Research and Development department at ARMOR is certainly one of the most important in the world of Thermal Transfer, with a team of 35 people and 3 laboratories covering an area of 1,000m² at the Thermal Transfer Industrial Expertise Centre. All ARMOR production sites in the world include an Applications department.

Thanks to an annual investment of 3% of turnover, ARMOR is equipped with leading-edge technology and an R&D team which possesses various and highly-specialized skills.

The main objectives of Research & Development are :

• to develop new products according to the specifications supplied by the Marketing department, while taking into account market standards and requirements, printer characteristics, special applications, all of which must be compatible with production facilities.
• to support Production, particularly by making proposals for the improvement and optimization of manufacturing processes. For example, SOLFREE, the first 100% solvent-free process, is a tangible demonstration of R&D being fully integrated into the various stages of production.
• to select raw materials and to anticipate and follow regulations dealing with chemical products (RoHS, REACH, etc.).

In pursuit of its objectives, R&D is structured around four key areas :

• Chemistry: designers of tomorrow’s products, experts in formulations and raw materials.
• Applications: guarantors of product performance levels, experts in printers and print quality.
• Industrialisation: experts in grinding, coating and slitting, guarantors of compatibility between products and production facility.
• Quality Support: the link between Customers, Production, Quality and the other three key areas.

Today it is the diversity of skills and the dynamism, combined with the experience of these teams, which has helped to establish the positive image of ARMOR’s products. It also enables us to offer our customers the widest product range on the market.

Ink grinding operations consist of making a uniform mixture of a wide variety of components (resins, wax, pigments and many others), of dissolving them according to the formulation and finally grinding them according to the cycles particular to each formulation.

On the industrial scale, the manufacture of inks previously formulated and tested on a semi-industrial scale remains a sensitive process, in light of the variety and sophistication of the components used, but also with the technical development of equipment.

Production units have seen important changes over the past few years, the most significant being the recent arrival of the new generations of "continuous mode" grinders and the introduction of a grinding unit fully dedicated to the direct feed of coating machines.

Just as with every other stage of production, quality control inspections are made to check for such things as dry material concentration and viscosity.

One of ARMOR’s strengths is the ability to coat several layers of ink of different types and thicknesses onto a very thin polyester film (PET) to make it suitable as a consumable for thermal transfer printers.

Beyond this simple definition, the coating operation can be broken down into the following stages :

1. The unwinding and feeding out of blank polyester film :
   To achieve a regular, consistent and clean coating of ink, ARMOR must control the passage from a static state to the unwinding of extremely thin polyester film at very high speed (several hundred metres per minute). Only the best suppliers of thin PET are used.
   
   
2. Ink coating operation(s) onto film :
   This stage, which involves coating very thin layers of ink onto the polyester film, requires an optimal balance to be achieved between five possible coating techniques and a number of other parameters, such as the chemistry and the physico-chemical properties of the ink, the coating speed, the ink grammage, etc.
   Numerous quality control checks are carried out automatically on the coating lines to guarantee conformity with specifications (e.g. ink grammage and the finish of the coating).
3. Post-processing of coated ink layers :
   This operation is just as important as the coating operation itself, as it gives the finished product its definitive properties. During this stage, the ink passes from a liquid state to a solid via heating, drying or even cooling operations.
4. Spooling the inked film :
   To complete the coating operation, the now ink-coated film is wound onto a core to make what is known as a "jumbo". This operation requires precise control of the tension and alignment of the film for the slitting operations to follow.

In summary, the successful completion of this part of the manufacturing process calls upon all the know-how and experience of all the ARMOR teams involved.

Roll slitting consists of transforming jumbos of inked film into ribbons to meet the specifications of the Thermal Transfer printer for which they have been designed, while still taking into account individual customization requirements.

ARMOR has 5 slitting sites across the globe to provide optimal customer proximity and high levels of responsiveness. Each of these sites operates with the same machines, the same technical procedures and uses ribbon slitting specifications from the same database, thereby ensuring that ribbons are manufactured identically worldwide, or are adapted according to specific market demands.

The strength of ARMOR lies in its ability to perfect this highly demanding industrial process and to manage a database which includes nearly 12,000 different ribbon specifications. A thermal transfer ribbon may vary according to printer requirements (length and breadth of inked film, size and characteristics of the spooling core, positioning of the inked side and end of ribbon detection system) or customer-specific elements (whether or not to display the trade name on the ribbon and core).

Between the slitting stage and logistics processing, the ribbon undergoes a number of identification and packing operations. This stage seems straightforward but is in fact extremely complex due to the wide variety of individual customer specifications.

ARMOR is conscious of the need to offer a high degree of flexibility in the area of product customization and offers customers a wide range of solutions :

• marking of the core with customer and ARMOR traceability data,
• individual film-wrapping and labelling of ribbons for protection purposes and ease of identification of individual products and their designated printer types.
• packing in cardboard boxes,
• box labels incorporating product and printer data, and complete traceability information.

Here too, the perfect integration of the database at the very heart of the 5 slitting/packing centre operations provides very high levels of product consistency, as well as conformity to specifications in every country in the world.

To be as responsive as possible to its customer needs, ARMOR has a sophisticated logistics organization.

At each ARMOR production plant, product stocks represent the ribbon configurations in greatest demand in each zone, thereby offering an ideal response to local needs and optimal delivery lead times.

Service level quality is a daily priority at ARMOR. Solutions are tailored to our partners’ requirements (e.g. stock relocation).

The traceability system, in place throughout the chain from production to delivery, provides very efficient product monitoring: the assurance of peace of mind for our customers.