Wide-format digital inkjet technology and screen printing analysis

introduction

The printing market is changing with each passing day and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce, but at the same time it is full of opportunities. Large format printing is a promising market. Some survey reports indicate that large-scale printing is the most potential and most easily overlooked of all potential value-added services that commercial printing companies can provide. Nowadays, there is a growing demand for large-format printing on a variety of substrates. Advertising companies, design studios, posters for posters, indoor and outdoor POP advertising, and retail logos and commercial displays all require the support of large-format technology. Many commercial printers are missing the opportunity to make huge profits in large-format printing.

First, the development of wide-format printing technology

Fifty-six years ago, many people predicted that screen printing would soon disappear under the impact of digital printing technology. But today, screen printing is still full of vigor and business. Is this just a momentary phenomenon or is the prophecy of prophecy itself wrong?

1. Digital Printing Continues to Develop

The growth rate and growth of digital printing are not as predicted by experts in the 1990s, but we do see a growth in the power of wide-format digital printing. The reason why the prediction of 5 years ago failed was because of the reason that the real difficulty in predicting the wide-format printing market is that it does not form a market at all. It is a different image company that uses a hybrid technology to serve customers in various fields. To make predictions, you cannot observe only existing digital users. You must also confirm and analyze non-users and potential users of digital printing equipment.

2. The growth of wide-format digital printing is only at individual printing companies

From the point of view of the speed at which the new printing shop was established, photographic laboratories, label shops, and reproduction workshops for wide-format printing have peaked in 1985-1990 and have been declining in recent years. If we look at digital printing, we will find that only digital printing is still growing, but it is not as fast as it was when the wide-format digital press was installed just a few years ago. Comparing this trend with the data obtained from the government, we can see that although the European image market continues to grow at an annual rate of 15 percent, the overall number of wide-format images and printing suppliers and screen printers has declined at a slow rate. trend.

This trend is extremely detrimental to companies that lack market skills, innovation, digital technology or capital, and their competitive position is constantly declining. In the past, printers, image labs and label companies engaged in simple production could rely on controlling local small markets to get some old customers, but in the digital prepress era, technology determined who was the winner of wide-format printing. Professional image studios, copy rooms, screen printers or label makers can win customers. However, unlike digital printing, since all of these image markets use digital prepress, communications and imaging technologies, they should compete with each other in both traditional and new fields.

3 . Foreign market analysis

In Europe and the United States, these issues will continue to shape the market for wide-format printing equipment and consumer goods and their structures. Many manufacturers and suppliers once imagined that with the non-technicalization of the printing process, a large number of newly formed companies will produce, and innumerable existing printers will adopt wide-format digital printing as their company's course of expansion. This seems to lead to a huge market development, but the market is with the use of water-based inks and expensive

The image industry associated with slow inkjet machines also seems to have led to the development of all local service markets, but the reality proves that this is not the case.

Wide-format traditional printing companies have found that digital printing seems to be easier than developing a new company from scratch. And when existing users increase and reinvest, they have different meanings in terms of the types of machines they buy. A simple rule of success is to obtain the business volume of wide-format digital printers with different capabilities. What this contains is the addition of machines with production capabilities, ie machines that can be directly printed on traditional substrates rather than expensive special substrates. This trend inevitably led some companies to reduce the expected production of digital substrates to meet actual market demand. The current level has already reached twice the actual demand. Failure to reduce the production volume will result in a large backlog of products.

In short, the digital revolution has indeed had a great impact on traditional wide-format printing suppliers, such as screen printers, image studios, and label printing shops. With the progress of the times and the maturity of technology, digital printing is an inevitable development trend in the future.

Second, the principle of digital inkjet printing and its process

Digital inkjet printing, also known as color inkjet printing, uses a scanner or digital camera as an input device to input the desired text into a computer, edited by an electronic color separation system, and then directly controlled by the computer's inkjet system. Dyestuffs or pigments are sprayed on fabrics for printing. Inkjet printing can be classified into continuous ink-jet and drop-on-demand according to the ink jet principle.

1. Continuous Jet CIJ

(Continuous lnk Jet)

The continuous jet principle is to apply a high frequency oscillating pressure to the ink, so that the ink is ejected from the nozzle to form a uniform continuous droplet flow. At the nozzle there is an electric field that changes in synchronization with the graphic photoelectric conversion signal. The ejected droplets are selectively charged in the charging electric field. When the droplet stream continues to pass through the deflection electric field, the charged droplets are deflected by the electric field, and the uncharged droplets continue to maintain the straight flight state. Straight flying droplets

Can not reach the substrate and be collected by the liquid trap. The charged droplets are ejected onto the substrate to complete the printing.

2 . On-demand jet DOD

(dro On Demand)

The working principle of the on-demand jet printing system is that when printing is required, the system applies high-frequency mechanical force and electromagnetic thermal shock to the ink in the nozzle, so that it forms tiny droplets to be ejected from the nozzle and is controlled by a computer to eject the ink. The pattern is set. The most widely used on-demand spray type is thermal ink jet technology. It uses heat pulses to generate ink droplets. The computer controls a heated resistance wire to the specified temperature, causing ink gas (fog) to be ejected from the nozzle. Another type of DOD technology is a voltage-based injection system that is controlled by a computer to impose a potential on the conductive material so that the conductive material compresses in the direction of the electric field and expands in the vertical direction so that the ink is ejected.

Inkjet printing not only requires high-precision nozzle technology, high-precision control technology, but also requires the use of high-purity, high-concentration, high-fastness, high-stability ink (ink) to match it.

3 . Digital inkjet printing process

The process of inkjet printing depends on the ink used. Generally, acid dyes are mainly used for carpet printing, disperse dyes are mainly used for polyester fabrics, and reactive dyes are mainly used for cotton fabrics. The following is an example of an ink jet printing process using reactive dye inks for cotton fabrics.

Fabric pretreatment → Prepress drying → Inkjet printing → Postpress drying → Steaming (10° to 102°C, 8 min) → Washing → Drying.

The pretreatment of fabrics is mainly due to the wettability of the fabrics and the capillary effect between the fibers. Appropriate printed fillers must be used in conventional fabric printing pastes to prevent bleedout. The general inkjet printer can only use low-viscosity water-based ink. If it is directly printed on the fabric, the dye liquor will be permeated in all directions, so the printed fabric must be properly pretreated. Use special software for inkjet printing at appropriate resolution

Lines, pattern printing, printing fabric post-processing is mainly to improve its fastness.

Third, wide-format digital inkjet printing market survey

The United States NPES (International Printing Business Association) has conducted a survey of the large-format digital inkjet printing market and found that its market is large, with an annual output value of approximately US$11 billion. And any company engaged in digital printing business can quickly add large-format inkjet printers and get excellent economic benefits.

1 . Domestic large format digital inkjet market competition

The domestic large-format printer market is still in its infancy. The application in the CAD field is relatively mature, and the GIS and GA (graphics image) fields are becoming increasingly popular under the strong participation of some manufacturers. At present, its market share in the large format printer market exceeds 80%. If this market is divided according to technical fields (mainly including CAD, GIS) and GA, the application of domestic large-format printers in the field of technology accounts for about 90% of the total, and HP’s market share in this field has also taken up. About 90% is ingrained; Hewlett-Packard's share in GA is also about 60%. Immediately following HP, it is ENCAD. This professional printing peripheral enterprise in the United States, although not very large in scale, is powerful, accounting for 15% of the domestic large format printer market in 1989. Second place, but since 1999, EPSON and Canon and other vendors began to intervene in the large-format printing market, and after the initial success, currently no one instinctively moves only Hewlett-Packard.

As we all know, technology is never a vertex, and any competitive market follows almost the same pattern: In the start-up phase, "fast fish eat slow fish," and in the mature stage, "big fish eat small fish." From the present relative to the entire digital printing market, China's digital printing has a very low level in the entire printing industry, far below the world average. High-quality, high-speed wide-format digital printing equipment is scarce, which does not match the rapidly growing market demand, but this "mismatched" itself has great business opportunities. Timely quote new technologies, new processes, new equipment, reduce blind spots in existing businesses, supplement new business growth points, improve the competitiveness of enterprises, and achieve “I have no people and I have excellent people”. This is to maintain the sustained and steady growth of enterprises. The only way for the "evergreening of the industry".

Author: Ma Jintao Source: Screen Printing

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