The importance of pre-treatment in digital textile printing - part 1

摘要

Digital printing on to textile materials has seen rapid growth in recent years. Through increased flexibility, quick adaptation to fashion trends, easy reproduction of patterns, dispensing with the expensive manufacture of screens and their storage and reducing water wastage, digital printing is increasingly gaining in importance and now contributes to about 3% of the total printed textile market. The new generation of industrial single pass printing machines can achieve speeds of up to 60 m/min and print widths of up to 5 metres. The digital printing of textiles include the system components of fabric preparation, pre-treatment, inkjet printing with ink, print-head and machine parameters, print fixing and fastness improvement which all play a decisive role in the printing process. Furthermore the inkjet ink formulation, the specific print head and the complex interactions between them have all to be considered when total inkjet solutions are developed for textile.