Digital Printing of Textiles

H Ujiie

• Publisher: Woodhead Publishing
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781845691585
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Ingegneria industriale

At present the textile industry produces the majority of its 34 billion square yards of printed textile fabric by screen printing. However as we move into the digital age developments in digital printing of paper are being adapted more and more for the textile market. Inkjet textile printing is growing while growth in analog textile printing remains stagnant. As digital print technologies improve offering faster production and larger cost-effective print runs, digital printing will grow to become the technology that provides the majority of the world's printed textiles.This comprehensive introduction to the subject is broken into five sections. After two introductory chapters, it goes on to look in a number of detailed chapters at printer and print head technologies. The next section examines the printer software required for successful colour design and management. The digital printing colouration process is explored next, with chapters on substrate preparation, pigmented ink, aqueous inkjet ink, pre-treatment and printing on cationized cotton with reactive inks. The book is concluded with three chapters on the design and business aspect of digital printing.Digital printing of textiles contains fundamental technical explanations along with recent research, and is an invaluable guide for product developers, retailers, designers and academic researchers.

• Provides coverage of all the current developments in digital textile printing
• Covers important areas such as printer and print head technologies, printer software, digital printing colouration and design and business for digital printing

1

The evolution and progression of digital printing of textiles

V. Cahill VCE Solutions, USA

1.1 Introduction

The saga of digitally printing and dyeing of fabrics, yarns and garments involves a past of a few decades, a dynamic present and likely a bright future. This introduction accounts for the origins and evolution of textile printing to digital solutions. It identifies some of the many creators and pioneers of these technologies and assesses their impact on the textile printing industry. It discusses a few of the false starts that in turn contributed to sustained successes of digital printing technologies for textile decoration. It uses the exhibitions that have witnessed the introduction of innovative digital technologies for textile printing as road marks that indicate trends and point the way to digital textile printing’s bright future.

In focusing on the market demand for textile printed applications, it attempts to answer questions such as:

• What are the market forces driving the adoption of digital technologies for printing textiles?

• What are the characteristics and qualities of digital printing that either favor or discourage its adoption for meeting market demand for decorated fabric and fibers?

• What are textile applications that digital printing can supply more cost effectively than existing analog printing methods?

• How is technology evolving to address market demand?

• What are the global trends that shed light on the future of digital printing of textiles?

This chapter opens the door and invites the reader into the exciting world of digital textile printing. It introduces this volume’s tour of the many chambers of the digital textile print edifice that subsequent sections describe.

1.2 The origins of digital textile printing technologies

An early example of textile printing is found on a block-printed tunic dated from the fourth century CE.¹ Evidence suggests that carved block printing, also known as xylography, originated about the fourth century in China and initially found use in printing textiles and short Buddhist texts that believers carried as charm protection.^1,2 Sui emperor Wen-ti ordered the printing of Buddhist images and scriptures in an imperial decree of 593. The British Museum houses the oldest known block-printed book, the Diamond Sutra, dated 868 ce from Dunhuang, China. Block printing of textiles began to flourish in Surat in Gujarat (India) during the twelfth century for the printing of wall hangings, canopies and floor spreads.³ The printing of textiles spread around the world along the Silk Road and through the spice trade.

While we can only infer the origins of textile printing from the few artifacts that have survived, digital printing evolved in an age of record keeping. In 1686, Edme Mariotte suggested the basis for inkjet printing with the publication of his seminal work on fluid dynamics, ‘Traité du movement des eaux et des autres corps fluids’. It included observations on drop formation of fluids passing through a nozzle. Ebenezer Kinnersley added to this foundation when he demonstrated that electrical current could pass through water in 1748. During the following year of 1749, l’Abbé Nollet examined the effects of static electricity on the flow of drops from a capillary tube. Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thomson) received the first patent for an inkjet printing system in 1867, ‘Receiving or Recording Instruments for Electric Telegraphers’. Eleven years later in 1878, Lord Rayleigh (Sir John William Strutt) described the role of surface tension in drop formation. The 1920s and 1930s witnessed patent applications and issuances for inkjet recording devices, including notable inventions from Richard Howland Ranger and Francis G. Morehouse in 1928, Clarence W. Hansell⁴ for an electrically charged recycling device in 1929, and Kurt Gemscher in Germany in 1938.

During the same year, 1938, Chester Carlson invented analog electrophotography in Astoria, Queens, New York. It took Carlson and his subsequent partner company Haloid over 20 years and a few intermediate steps along the way, such as the Haloid A1 in 1949 and Copyflo in 1955, to deliver a successful office plain paper copier with the Xerox 914 in 1959. The A1 failed for the purpose that Haloid intended it as an office copier, but succeeded as a plate maker for commercial printing. Digital laser versions of electrophotography produced transfers in the 1980s to decorate fabrics, particularly T-shirts and other sewn garments and accessories. Researchers at Georgia Tech and North Carolina State University investigated the feasibility of printing fabric with electrophotography with some success.

In 1959, the Research Labs of Australia began exploiting its invention of developing electrostatic images with liquid toners. Xerox and others developed a similar liquid toner variation on electrophotography for wide format printing, electrostatic printing. In 1979, Xerox introduced its 2080 engineering copier. Xeroxcolorgrafx, Raster Graphics, 3 M, Nippon Steel-Synergy Computer Graphics, Calcomp, Silvereed, Phoenix Precision Graphics and others advanced this technology with the development of E-stat printers during the late 1980s and 1990s. Almost all of these companies have discontinued production of their electrostatic printers. Only 3 M of St Paul, Minnesota, USA, currently supplies and supports an electrostatic printer, the Scotchprint 2000. Hilord supplies both pigment resin and sublimation dye toner for electrostatic printers. Beta Color of Ontario, California, and others have developed processes for using Scotchprint 2000 for cost-printing polyester and Nylon 6.6 fabrics with sublimation toners.

In 1949, Elmquist applied for a patent for ‘Measuring Instrument of the Recording Type’. Two years later in 1951, Siemens released the first commercially produced inkjet printer based on the Elmquist patent, the Elema Oscilomink. Carl Helmuth Hertz and Sven Eric Simmonsson applied for patent on high-resolution continuous inkjet in 1965. This invention and other inventions of Dr Hertz and his colleagues at Sweden’s Lund Institute of Technology led to the development of the Stork and Scitex Iris proofing systems. This type of continuous inkjet technology features mutual charged droplet repulsion that produces very fine ink droplets at a very high frequency. It can produce high apparent resolution images with many gray or halftone levels. It suffers, however, from slow print production speed, a slight background from stray droplets, and the complications inherent with recirculation of unprinted toner drops. This process uses dye-based colorants that lack the level of permanence that pigments provide. The textile and fashion design industries have used these systems since their introduction. Stork also developed a successful proofing system for the commercial print industry in conjunction with DuPont.

In 1967, Professors Sweet and Cummings of Stanford University in California applied for a patent on a binary continuous inkjet array. In 1968, printer manufacturer A.B. Dick commercialized Sweet’s invention with the Videojet 9600. This device launched the marking and coding industry on its digital path. While early applications of this technology were primarily for coding cans, containers and other packaging, it was capable of marking fabric as well.

1.3 Digital carpet printing

In the early 1970s, Milliken of Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA, developed a digital carpet printer, which it launched in 1975 as the Milliken Millitron. This device fires continuous streams of dye from an array of nozzles along the full print width. Targeted streams of air deflect drops that do not contribute to the image are recycled. Undeflected drops continue on to strike a web of white carpet. Milliken advanced this technology from its early 10 dpi resolution to over 70 dpi. In 1976, Zimmer announced its carpet printer. Today, most printed commercial carpeting is digitally printed.

1.4 Sublimation

In 1973, RPL Supplies Inc., a company now in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, USA, developed a process for transfer printing digitally generated video images to fabric. This company and others developed this process with impact and thermal sublimation dye ribbon for use in customizing and personalizing gifts and promotional products.

1.5 Thermal inkjet and textile printing

In 1977, Canon’s Endo discovered the principle of thermal inkjet when placing a flame on the side of a pipette containing liquid that then emitted a drop of that liquid. Soon after, researchers at Hewlett-Packard encountered a similar phenomenon. Canon and HP applied these discoveries to the development of thermal inkjet print heads. Canon called its version ‘Bubble Jet’. In 1984, HP introduced the first commercial desktop inkjet, the HP Thinkjet. Canon’s Bubble Jet office printer followed in 1985 with the introduction of the BJ-80. Canon and HP licensed their inventions to each other and to other manufacturers, including IBM, Siemens, and others. Lexmark took over the IBM license when it purchased IBM’s printer division. Canon developed a Bubble Jet textile printer in the mid-1990s that printed fabric up to 1.6 meters in width at a throughput speed of a square meter per minute. The unit did not gain market acceptance due to its high sticker price and limited production capability, but it demonstrated a model for designing, printing, and processing textiles digitally that others have followed. Canon used a material transport system from Ichinose, which later introduced its own twelve-colour inkjet textile printer using HP thermal inkjet print heads that it exhibited at ITMA 1999 in Paris. This device also did not gain market adoption. Ichinose later partnered with DuPont to produce the Artistri 2020 printer using modified Seiko Instruments piezoelectric print heads. This device has won significant market adoption with about 160 printers installed by February 2006.

Perfecta, in conjunction with Zund, debuted a textile flatbed printer using Hewlett-Packard thermal inkjet print heads at FESPA 1996 at Lyon, France. Encad offered an inkjet textile printing system using Lexmark thermal inkjet print heads for proofing and short-run production in 1997. Despite a strong marketing effort, market adoption did not match company expectations and Encad eliminated its textile division.

In 1984, Canon introduced a digital laser copying system, the NP-9030, following its 1979 development of its LBP-10 laser beam printer. Canon continued to develop laser technology, resulting in the release of its CLC1 colour laser copier in 1987. This technology provided a means for producing four-colour process heat transfers for garment, accessory, and promotional product printing.

1.6 Seiren

In the early 1980s, the largest textile printer in Japan, Seiren of Fukui, began developing the possibility of inkjet printing of fabric directly. In 1989, it undertook to build a manufacturing facility for printing fabric digitally. By 1991, Seiren had added inkjet printing to complement its analog operations. It had a few hundred piezo inkjet printing devices constructed for its digital printing operations. It brought its considerable expertise with fabric inks to build a digital textile printing business with an annual gross sales volume in excess of $100 million by 2000. Seiren digitally prints textiles for automotive upholstery, active and swimwear, banners, and apparel. It has also developed the process of digital dyeing. Seiren opened Viscotecs™ stores where customers could order fabrics tailored to their needs. It has also developed information technology (IT) to supply online response to consumer and industry demand for printed and dyed products. Seiren created a model with its Viscotecs™ digital system for agile manufacturing that connects its mass customization production operations directly to the market. It has extended its digital printing of fabric around the world with production facilities in Japan, the United States, China, Thailand, Italy, Belgium, and Brazil.

1.7 Digital grand format and textile printing

During the 1980s, a number of companies developed digital methods to print billboards, building wraps, and large banners. In 1987, Gerber Scientific built large-drum digital grand format printing systems for billboard maker Metro Media Technologies (MMT), which has since become the largest supplier of digitally printed large and grand format graphics worldwide, with digital production locations in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. MMT prints on textiles in addition to paper and plastic substrates. In 2002, MMT unveiled two of the world’s largest inkjet billboard printers with their MegaDrums that measure 63 feet in circumference and 32 feet wide.

MMT’s competitors in the advertising and billboard markets quickly followed with their thrust into digital printing. In 1989, Vutek introduced its 801 digitally controlled airbrush billboard printer and in 1990 offered its 16-foot wide 1630 billboard printer. Other equipment manufacturers, such as Belcom, Data Mate Company Ltd, LAC Corporation, Matan/Scitex, Nur Macroprinters, and Signtech/Salsa also developed grand format printers for MMT’s competitors. These manufacturers have employed a variety of digital printing technologies including airbrush/valve jet, continuous inkjet, and piezo inkjet. Fabrics and fabric-reinforced vinyl have provided the primary substrate for grand format digital graphics banner and building wrap applications.

Geoff McCue filed a patent in 1990 for an inkjet computer to screen mask printer. Gerber Scientific acquired the rights to the McCue patent and produced a device to print a photo mask on photo emulsion coated screens. Stork of the Netherlands and Luescher of Switzerland combined to acquire the patent from Gerber. The inkjet masking systems based on the McCue patent provided the advantages of digital imaging to improve the cost and speed of analog print prepress.

In the fall of 1993, a group of engineers led by Patrice Girard formed Embleme that developed a continuous inkjet garment-printing device that used water-based UV-cure inks, Imaje CIJ print heads, and Fusion Systems curing lamps. Embleme established the feasibility of printing garments and operated a shop that offered customers digital printing of customer generated designs on sportswear.

1.8 FESPA 1996

As previously noted, Perfecta introduced a TIJ textile printer at FESPA 1996. Idanit exhibited its high-speed 162 Ad that demonstrated the advantages of large arrays of print heads for production printing, albeit targeting paper and vinyl sheet printing.

Around the same time, Matthew Rhome of Bradenton, Florida, applied for a patent for an i...

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright page
• Contributor contact details
• 1: The evolution and progression of digital printing of textiles
• 2: A designer’s perspective – digital versus traditional
• Part I: Printer/print head
• Part II: Printer software
• Part III: Digital printing coloration
• Part IV: Design and business
• Index