Part 2 of a review of the recent IMI Europe Digital Printing Conference, the main event of Digital Print Europe, Barcelona, 17-20 Sep 2018
Digital Printing Conference 2018 Review Part 1
The digital revolution in textile printing – requirements and trends for inkjet inks and textile chemistry
Recently, the pigment ink market for textile inkjet printing is emerging rapidly. Pigment inks have a lot of benefits such as a high colour strength and high light resistance. They are considered as “universal inks” because they can be applied directly on a large range of textile substrates without sophisticated or environmentally unfriendly pre- or post-treatments. Dr Enrico Sowade of Zschimmer and Schwarz discusses the impact of pre-treatment on ink performance.
Importance of hybrid print processes in the digital evolution
Electronics – essential components for high performance inkjet printing
A new combination instrument to monitor pigment size and shape
As print head and inkjet technology are progressing, the demand for characterisation of inks regarding their pigment size, single oversized grains and colloidal stability is increasing. The size of pigments has an impact on factors like printability, print head blockages, sharpness of texture, optical density and color gamut.
Improvement of printing quality through satellite formation control
Drop-on-demand piezoelectric inkjet printing represents nowadays one of the most diffused technologies thanks to its high performance and reliability. To achieve high quality printing many different requirements have to be met in terms of drop properties, leading to a very precise dot positioning and thus to a high quality final image.
Development of nanoparticle inks with active matrix materials
Reducing the thermal treatment conditions required for depositing metal oxide thin films onto flexible plastic substrates is a challenge. In this blog the use of preformed crystalline nanoparticles in active matrix will be discussed and with promising results showing this as a potential way forward.