The answer is negative. And there are 2 reasons:
Reason 1 – incomplete curing
Our UV ink complies with EN71-3.
This means that it does not contain regulated heavy metals and phthalates above their allowed threshold value. Unfortunately this does not mean that it is safe for decoration of pacifiers with our UV ink.
The reason is that acrylic monomers still remain in the ink film, even if we use full lamp power of the UV LED in current MUTOH machines. In the work area, oxygen inhibits the free radical polymerization on the surface of the print, as such 100% curing level is never reached. Production processes for these kind of applications involve dedicated inks and typically involve a post curing (second curing) in an oxygen free environment. Often 100% N2 (nitrogen) environment is used to allow 100% curing.
Due to the above reason, it is impossible to complete the curing reaction with the LED lamp on our UV machines. Monomers remain in the ink film. Therefore, it is dangerous to print onto pacifiers.
Reason 2 – Effect of high temperature
Pacifiers are regularly sterilized by dropping them into a pot of boiling water for five minutes or by using a microwave-safe sterilizer accessory. Based on the polymer materials study, it is widely known that heat resistance of most of the acrylic resin is below 60 °C degrees unless it is specifically formulated. So if it is put in boiling water, the ink coating most likely will be drastically reduced and the print will be removed from the pacifier.