Thursday 23 May 2013


Tile Inkjet Printing - How it works.
Part 1 of 2

History
Amazingly the concept of inkjet printing has actually been around two hundred years but the technology was first extensively developed in the early 1950s. By the late 1970s inkjet printers that could reproduce digital images generated by computers were developed.
Using the technology to print onto tiles began in 2000 where it was showcased at that year’s Cevisama exhibition in Spain. Since then there has been a steady evolution of mechanical, electronic, ink, pigment and chemical technology in a highly competitive market. Today there are a wide variety of machines being made and used across the world.
Technology
Typically print heads use piezoelectric crystals to control ink-flow out of microscopic nozzles directly onto the tile body. The technology is essentially the same as your desktop inkjet printer at home however there are significant differences in scale, resolution and speed of operation.
Instead of using four heads which scan across the page tile inkjet printers use four or more rows that span the entire width of the tiles so the inks can be laid down in succession. The array may have up to 1000 heads per row.

Inkjet printers can easily be integrated into glazing production lines and the race is now on to develop machines able to decorate tiles 24/7 at 1000 to 1500m2 per hour. The problem is that there’s a trade-off between speed and resolution or coverage, just like the printer on your desk at home, photo quality takes a lot longer than a page of black text.
Some tile printers can produce very high definition images at up to 1000 dpi which is beyond the ability of the human eye to resolve. For most tiles around 200-300 dpi is adequate, roughly the resolution a colour magazine or book. However, the most important feature is the amazing versatility of inkjet printing.

Advantages
Different machines for digital inkjet printing are available with a variety of characteristics but these are the main advantages.
·         The image printed is chemically stable
·         Inkjet printing is efficient and there’s far less wastage than with contact printing systems like rollers.
·         Removing rollers from the process reduces moving parts and thus costs of installation and maintenance.
·         Excellent potential to reproduce natural stones and pictures.
·         Much faster change-over times to new colours or designs.
·         Greatly improved consistency of colour because storage and control of all printing parameters is more finely controlled and easier.
·         Because the inkjet process occurs at a distance it is possible decorate relief surfaces and up to the edges.
·         Inkjet decoration shortens the path from idea to product.
There are more advantages but we must also admit that digital printing cannot always substitute for traditional methods of printing, especially when we need higher thicknesses of paste or when we need strongly colored surface areas. Work is in progress so we can expect improvements and further cost reductions because inkjet technology is still in evolution (after overcoming initial problems). Inkjet technology is currently expanding its reach to different kinds of tile and, of course, the technology aspect itself is arousing the interest of more developers.
Part 2 next week.

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