TYPES OF PRINTING MACHINES:
Printing is the process of applying pigments, dyes, or other associated compounds to textile fabrics in the shape of patterns. Textile printing is similar to dyeing, but in dyeing, the entire fabric is uniformly covered with one color, whereas in printing, one or more colors are applied to it in specific areas and in sharply defined patterns.
PROCESS OF PRINTING
- Preparation of cloth for printing
- Preparation of printing paste
- Printing the fabric
- Drying the printed fabric
- Fixing the printing with steam or hot air (for pigments)
- After washing
TYPES OF PRINTING MACHINES:
There are numerous fabric printing methods available, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. The form of textile printing used is often determined by a variety of factors, including print runs and durability.
- Rotary printing
- Flat bed printing
- Digital printing
ROTARY PRINTING
A continuous printing method that uses a perforated cylindrical screen to apply color. A separate screen must be built or engraved for each color in the print design. Nickel is used to make the mesh. Screen printing with textile speeds up to 60m per minute is fully continuous.
PROCESS
- Fabric is fed into the machine, where all the creases are removed from the fabric.
- In the printer part of the machine, the cloth to be printed is fed under uniform tension. It usually has an adhesive on the back that allows it to stick to a conveyor printing blanket.
- The fabric is then passes under the rotating screens through which the printing paste is pumped.
- Printing paste is automatically pumped from the pressure tank.
- A squeegee device inside the screen pushes the print medium through the screen and onto the fabric as the screen rotates.
- The fabric is passed into the drying woven for drying.
- Curing and Washing is done as a part of finishing.
FLAT BED PRINTING
An automated variant of hand-operated silk screen printing. The flat-bed screen method is a start-stop, semi-continuous operation. Each color and design motif has its own screen. The pattern repeat size is limited to the flat screen's width and length specifications. The rate of production is 15 to 25 yards per minute.
PROCESS
- The cloth is initially bonded to a continuous belt that moves.
- A fixed screen is lowered onto the area to be printed, and the printing paste is cleaned away by a squeegee.
- The fabric-glued belt is then moved to the pattern-repeat position, and the screen is lowered again.
- The printed cloth is moved forward one step at a time and then dried.
- The rubber blanket is washed, dried, and rotated back to the fabric in-feed area on a continual basis.
DIGITAL PRINTING
A method of applying tiny drops of color to a cloth using print heads. There are no restrictions on the number of colors or the size of the request. For traversing head machines, typical speeds are 30 to 40 yards per hour. Some of the most recent devices claim to be linear at speeds of up to 100 yards per minute.
PROCESS
- All fabrics must be treated with chemicals and prepped for digital printing before proceeding to digital printing.
- The feed roller is used to feed the fabric through the printer.
- Thousands of small droplets of ink are sprayed to the fabric's surface.
- Digital printers use an ink jet-based method of printing colourants into cloth, with the pattern created on a computer.
- The ink is then cured by passing the cloth through a steam/heat chamber.
- After that, the steamed cloth needed to be washed and dried.
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