Printing is one of the oldest methods to change the appearance of a fabric and to enhance its value. From printing with wooden blocks, over rotary and screen printing, the industry more recently arrived at digital printing. The expression “digital printing” is based on the technique of printing a design directly on a substrate; in the beginning, it was only paper printing that derived from desktop publishing. That seems to be a long time ago. Digital printing has higher costs per page than more traditional offset printing methods; however, this price is usually offset because digital technology avoids the cost of all the technical steps required to make printing plates, including waste water, preparation, screens, etc. Not to forget about shorter production time cycles, and the ability to run small lots.
较小的地块
Working in the silk novelty business many year ago, the author remembers very well the cost at the time produce a new range of expensive printed fabrics twice each year. Just the costs of manpower, design, screens and fabrics to produce the sample lengths were astronomical. In the days of big lots and few designs, the basic costs were covered later in the season by hopefully selling a lot of the same design. However, times have changed and so did quantities, turning into much smaller lots and more colors of the same design. One alternative production method used was transfer paper printing technology, which allowed the printing of fabrics in a much cleaner way by applying the design from the transfer paper onto the fabric. But also this method lasted only for a short period, and wasn’t very flexible.
为什么不打印像纸这样的面料？
该圆的正交是开发一种技术，该技术允许以较低的成本，更快的吞吐时间和灵活性的速度进行体面的设计。随着计算机及其软件的改进，计算机打印机械制造商开始考虑新的数字打印应用程序。为什么不像纸上那样在墨水上打印呢？在1970年代后期，开发了可以重现计算机生成的数字图像的墨水打印机。该技术还需要适当的墨水，更大的量需要更大的墨水箱。最终，使用压电晶体的打印头解决了这个棘手的问题，直接将材料沉积在底物上。两种技术主要应用于当代喷墨打印机：连续（CIJ）和按需（DOD）。
Two Technologies And The Appropriate Ink
In the beginning, only polyester fabrics could be printed. But over the years, the chemical and dyestuff industry developed inks that were capable of printing on virtually every substrate.
The CIJ method was commercially introduced in the early 1950s. In this technology, a high-pressure pump directs liquid ink from a reservoir through a gun body and a microscopic nozzle, creating a continuous stream of ink droplets. CIJ is one of the oldest ink jet technologies in use and is fairly mature. The major advantages are: The very high velocity (~50m/s) of the ink droplets, which allows for a relatively long distance between print head and substrate; and the very high drop ejection frequency, allowing for very high-speed printing. Another advantage is freedom from nozzle clogging as the jet is always in use, therefore allowing volatile solvents (ketones or alcohols) to be employed, making the ink “stick” to the fabric and dry in a short period of time.
DOD technology is divided into thermal DOD and piezoelectric DOD. Most consumer ink-jet printers work with the thermal ink-jet process. In the thermal ink-jet process, the print cartridges consist of a series of tiny chambers, each containing a heater, all of which are constructed by photolithography. Here the ink plays a big role: Its surface tension as well as the condensation and resultant contraction of the vapor bubble pulls a further charge of ink into the chamber through a narrow channel attached to an ink reservoir. The inks involved are usually water-based and use either pigments or dyes.
大多数商用和工业喷墨打印机都在每个喷嘴后面的墨水室中使用压电材料，而不是加热元件。当施加电压时，压电材料会改变形状，从而在流体中产生压力脉冲，从而迫使喷嘴的墨水液滴。压电墨水喷射允许比热墨水更多种墨水，因为不需要挥发性组件，也没有Kogation的问题，这意味着堆积墨水残留物。但是，印刷头制造更昂贵。
Italy In The Forefront
如上周的RUPP报告中所述，意大利纺织机械制造商协会（ACIMIT）在意大利的Villa Erba举行了新闻发布会，以概述其在全球市场上的成功，并提供正在开发的创新的详细信息，并将重点介绍在ITMA 2015。
从传统上讲，意大利纺织机械制造商在整理领域非常成功。因此，行业顾问乔瓦尼·索马里瓦（Giovanni Sommariva）的演讲中涵盖了包括墨水喷气式公司（Ink Jet）的印刷品，这并不奇怪。他强调了在减少水，能量和染料消耗以及墨水射流数字印刷的意义方面，在织物染色方面取得的进步。Sommariva说：“墨水印刷是由意大利技术驱动的，并提供了及时的生产，低能消耗，减少废物和易于操作。”“数字印刷是负责制造世界上最新的意大利时尚的一场革命的关键技术之一。全纺织生产链已经进行了完全修改，以提供灵活性和及时供应，包括RFID和条形码跟踪，检查和包装系统，以实现完全的可食用性。”Sommariva提到了意大利制造商Robustelli。在本文的推出期间，Robustelli提到他的公司现在在目标不再是数量的市场中成功了，包括土耳其，韩国，日本，越南和印度。
Acquisitions
Reggiani Macchine is one of the market leaders in digital textile printing. Reggiani provides an extensive range of industrial ink-jet printers employing water-based inks for printing on fabric. Apart from water-based inks, Reggiani’s versatile printers are also suitable for acid, pigment and reactive dye printing inks.
另一个基于意大利的数字印刷技术先驱是MS打印解决方案。随着单频机器的引入，数字打印的能力比旋转打印机更快地以速度运行，MS一直是第一个引入这些机器之一，即“ Lario”模型，高分辨率为35线性的型号每分钟仪表和每分钟75线性仪表的总体最大速度。
It seems that digital printing is becoming more and more important in the global textile market. These two leading companies were acquired by big companies. Just a week after ACIMIT’s press conference, it was announced that Electronics For Imaging (EFI), based in Fremont, Calif., had established a leading presence in the ink-jet textile printing market with its strategic acquisition of Reggiani Macchine, in a deal worth around 125 million euros ($136 million). And MS Printing Solutions was acquired by the $7.8 billion Dover Corp. last year.
EFI的首席执行官Guy Gecht表示：“这项收购使EFI在世界上最大的行业之一中处于直接领导地位，这些行业正在经历从模拟印刷到数字化的转变。纺织品印刷市场才刚刚开始过渡，这将使制造商能够从长期到按需制造业转移，从而响应对短期和自定义的需求不断增长的需求。”
毫无疑问，在ITMA 2015年数字印刷技术上，就新颖性和全球印刷市场不断变化的世界的可能性而言，将成为亮点之一。
2015年8月4日
