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REVIEW PAPER

A
Topic
Application of computer in textile
printing (digitalization)…

SOUTHEAST 2021 . May

UNIVERSITY

Submitted by
Baha Uddin Reza 2017000400097

Kaniz Fatema 2018000400040

ABS Razib 2018000400036

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Tusher Kante Dhar 2017000400033
 ABSTRACT

Widespread acceptance of demand-activated manufacturing architecture (DAMA) and just-in-time (JIT)

sales and marketing concepts have placed tremendous pressure on textile printers. Presently available
continuous rotary screen printing equipment are often inflexible in terms of quick customer response and
short runs. In the present article, an attempt has been made to review critically two technological
innovations in textile printing, viz xerography and ink jet printing. Out of these two, ink jet printing has
achieved considerable success till pre-production stage, i.e. simple printing and R&D work is continuing
in developed countries to perfect the technology for production printing. It is envisaged that by the turn
of this century, a customer instead of purchasing the printed fabric available in the store may be
available in the scan the design on computer, select the design and the color combination, or create the
new design and load the information to the computer of the printer and get the printed length of the
fabric with a design of his/her choice.

INTRODUCTION

Rotary screen printing machine was introduced in 1963 and since then there is continued rise in its
popularity. That’s the beginning of digital computer in printing. Worldwide. 60% of fabric printing is
done by rotary screen printing and 18% by flat screen printing. Although rotary screen printing
machines are most suited for production runs, they are not ideal to meet the requirements of demand-
activated manufacturing architecture (DAMA) and Justin time (JET) concepts, According to these
concepts the textile printers must respond to the delivery of high quality fashion designs with wide range
of color combinations in extremely short time. In addition, there is also equal pressure on textile printers
to produce bulk prints in an environment-friendly manner.

Prior to 1980, the majority of printers followed essentially a totally manual approach to the production
of textile prints, from the initial design stage to first bulk production. Fig.1 shows the approach followed
in textile printing at that time.

After ITMA 83 show in Milan the situation changed with the availability of relatively low-cost and
increasing powerful PC-based systems. Since ITMA’91 in Hanover, there has been dramatic increase in
the associated technology of visual display units, graphic controllers, scanners and high volume data
storage systems. With the right investment the printers now scan designs into a CAD system where a
number of colour combinations can be changed, designs manipulated, put into repeat, colourways
created and colour separations produced. The digital information generated can subsequently be used to
produce screens directly by the latest laser engraving technology or by the conventional means using
computer produced transparencies, Fig. 2 shows integration of CAD system into print production.
In spite of these developments, the currently dominant rotary screen printing method has several
limitations, such as colour and pattern changes require long process set-up lime, screen production is
slow and expensive, and screens have relatively short lives and require considerable storage space even
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 when not being used, Thus, a new technology for fabric printing is needed that will permit frequent style
and color changes with minimum downtime for changeover and will allow computer storage Of design
information. Two revolutionary printing techniques, viz xerographic printing and ink jet printing, have
the potential of meeting these requirements.

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 XEROGRAPHIC PRINTING OF TEXTILES

Considerable research work has been carried out at Georgia Institute of Technology in the past five
years for adapting xerographic printing to the patterning of textile fabrics, The research in this area is
directed in two directions, viz. system development and toner development.
Current systems of xerography are developed for paper printing which operate primarily batch-wise and
for fairly narrow width (8.5in). A single sheet of paper is printed al a lime, Thirty-six inch wide copiers
have been developed recently. Two major challenges faced by the xerography technology for fabric
printing are handling larger widths and continuous printing at a speed required in modern printing.
Therefore a copier for printing textiles would be different since it must operate continuously at a speed
of up to 50 m/min. Information storage and input for image formation should be accomplished using a
computerized system which would facilitate fast style and colour changeovers as well as aid in
production of new designs. Considerable research is in progress at Georgia Institute of Technology for
developing a suitable xerography system for continuous printing of textiles.
Advantages of Xerography in Textile Printing
Xerography has the following advantages in printing fabrics:
Information storage can be computerized, eliminating the need for large storage space for screens.Since
the system can be computerized, fast style and colour changeover are possible. Potential for producing
all shades using three primaries and the black. Pigments which are generally less expensive than dyes
and offer better light fastness and other properties can be used for coloration,Washing and drying after
printing are eliminated.
Limitations of Xerography in Textile Printing could be,
While xerography has much promise for fabric printing, current technology has been developed for
paper printing. Fabric printing has requirements beyond those for paper printing. Xerographic paper
printing systems have been designed primarily for operating in batch mode for fairly narrow widths.
Fabric printing systems will need to print much wider widths in a continuous mode. The toner binder
requirements for fabric printing are quite different from those for paper printing. The paper toner binders
consist of styrene/acrylate copolymers with poor adhesion to textile fibres and low dry cleaning solvent
fastness.

INK JET MECHANISMS

The first application of digital printing to textiles was Milliken’s Millitron system for printing carpets.
This made use of an airbrush technique, with jets of air drawing ink from dye-filled nozzles. This is the
atomization mode introduced. The resolution was not high, but it was quite sufficient for this particular
end-use. This technology has been modified with time, and now appears to involve dye jets activated
by solenoid valves. Digital printing of other textile substrates began in the 1990s and print head
mechanisms were selected that were capable of producing smaller drop sizes and achieving higher
resolutions. An overview of the mechanisms of interest is presented in Fig.

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 Most office printers make use of thermal print heads, and there have been some machines for
textile printing using this mechanism. However, the majority of heads for textile ink jet printing are
piezoelectric as these appear to give greater robustness and flexibility to machine builders. The inherent
limit to the rate at which ink can be put onto substrates has led to innovations in continuous processes,
where each head emits a continuous jet of ink that is subsequently broken up and steered either to the
desired print location or to a collection head for recycling. These different technologies are described
and discussed further below. A useful review from a broader perspective is by Le [6] and another from a
textiles perspective by Dawson. Ink jet printing is a non-impact printing method, projecting drops of ink
onto surfaces to be printed. The commercial developments in the area of ink jet printing are still limited
to computer-aided office printouts, hard copy output of textile design onto pauper and in the printing of
carpets and pile fabrics. Attempts are being made in developed countries with fine resolution (lo print
onto textile substrate using the principle of ink jet printing. There are two types of ink jet printers. The
coarse resolution type has a maximum resolution of 40 dpi and is based on valve control technology.
Printers offering the fine resolution (up to 300 dpi) can be sub-divided into two basic technologies
continuous stream (CS) and drop-on-demand (DOD). Within these two types, there are further
subgroups. It is in this area of fine resolution that there has been most recent research activities.

SOFTWARE

File Management to Achieve Precision Printing and Colour Management Digital printers are controlled,
of course, by software. That software must not only control the movements of the print heads, but also
the way each nozzle fires. (Potentially every nozzle fires 10 000 times per second and there may be
hundreds of nozzles for every head in action. This means that a million instructions every second should
be regarded as normal.) Modern machines may include grey scale facilities, in which case additional
information is required on drop size.
The result of these computations is to create a colour, but how does that colour relate to the inks (CMYK
supplemented by additional process colours) and the selected substrates. Furthermore, how does the
colour range realisable by digital printing compare with the colour gamut required by the designer or
customer?

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 Consequently, software controlling digital printing has two distinct functions putting
drops of ink on to the substrate in predefined locations, and ensuring that the specified colour is
achieved. Raster Image Processor (RIP) Software for Precision Printing
When an image is scanned, the 2-dimensional area is subdivided to the pixel level and, for each pixel,
information is gathered about the hue, saturation and luminance.

When all has been gathered, these data can be reassembled by the CAD software and viewed on-screen.
The resultant image is known as a ‘raster image’. It is a grid of x and y coordinates on a display space,
with each point linked to colour (or monochrome) values. A widely-used synonym is the bitmap image.
Examples of raster image file formats in widespread use are BMP, TIFF, GIF and JPG.
Raster images tend to be large (as each pixel is linked to colour data) and they are not easy to modify.
Nevertheless, we cannot do without them. We produce raster images by scanning and by digital
photography, and we require raster images to print (which can be considered as reversing the process of
scanning). However, manipulation of images, and much design work, is best done using vector graphics.
A vector is an object that combines quantity and direction. A line can be a vector: it can be defined by its
length and its orientation. Vector graphics build up whole images in terms of vector statements, and this
is the basis of most CAD drawing packages. Objects can be modified and resized very easily by
changing the parameters of the vectors. They can be manipulated by mathematical processing and other
instructions given by the designer. An additional benefit is that vector graphic images are smaller than
raster graphic images. Popular drawing packages such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw and AutoCAD
all make use of vector graphics. Many fonts are infinitely scalable, which is a sure indication that they
are stored as a set of vector statements.
It is relatively easy to convert vector graphics to raster graphics, but it is not at all easy to do it the other
way round. Thus, Adobe and CorelDraw software both allow users to save image files in a raster file
format. This conversion of vector to raster graphics is a necessary step for printing images. The
hardware/software product that converts CAD images to raster graphic format suitable for specific
printers is referred to as a Raster Image Processor (RIP). In many industrial applications, RIPs are
required to enlarge images for printing. There is a potential loss of clarity when images are enlarged, so
RIP software has special algorithms to maintain the integrity of lines and avoid pixilation effects. As the
technology has developed, RIP software has been produced with many additional functionalities.

Colour Management Software:

The CAD screen, printer, scanner and digital camera tools that are widely used in modern design
processes are all limited in their colour gamuts. The CAD screen, which uses red, green and blue
primary colours (RGB), is the most versatile, but the others (built on the process colours cyan, magenta,
yellow and black, CMYK) do have noticeable restrictions. For example, 4-colour printing has
difficulties reproducing bright reds, greens and rich blues. It follows that software controlling the
printing of coloured images must interpret the design instructions in terms of the colour gamut that can

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 be achieved by the printer – taking into account the relevant printing technologies, the inks and the
substrate.
Most commercial machines for printing textiles offer 6 to 8 process colours. For example, Pantone Inc.
has developed a 6-colour printing system using orange and green inks in addition to CMYK. This is the
Hexachrome system and it gives a much improved colour gamut. Of course, there is no limit to the
number of process colours that could be produced, and printers need to be able to experiment to find
ways of satisfying customer requirements.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This review has benefited from numerous local specialists in textile digital printing, several of whom I
have had the pleasure of working with on projects. Special thanks are due to Paul Noone of Direct
Textile Imaging Ltd., John Clegg of J. Clegg & Bros (Rakewood) Ltd., Sidney Jackson of Colourscope
Ltd., David W. Swale of Rawdon Chemical Services and Tim Hoyle of Tim Hoyle Digital Print and
Design Ltd. In the writing of the review, I have appreciated feedback from John Provost of
BASF GmbH, as well as his supplying me with several images. I found the Ink Jet Academy course run
by Alan Hudd of Xennia Technology Ltd and Mike Willis of Pivotal Resources Ltd a valuable
experience, and I am grateful to Xennia Technology for giving permission to use some of the images
from that course

REFERENCE:

1. Name: R B chavan (Dpt. Of textile technology, IIT, Delhi)

Paper Title: Technological revolution in Textile Printing
Journal Title: Indian Journal of Fiber and Textile Research
Vol: 21,
Year of Publication: March, 1996

2. Name: David J. Taylor

Paper Title: Textile Digital Printing Technologies
Journal Title: Textile Progress
Vol: 42,
Doi: 10.1533/tepr.2005.0004
Year of publication: July 2010

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