Analysis on the Development Status of Digital Printing Ink

The printing and dyeing industry is an important link in the textile industry chain and a key process to increase the added value of textiles and clothing. After long-term development, the production and processing capacity of my country's printing and dyeing industry has ranked first in the world, but there are still problems such as insufficient innovation ability, low added value of products, and inadequate environmental protection. The printing and dyeing industry urgently needs industrial transformation and technological upgrading, and digital printing has become a “outlet” for the development of the industry.

Textile digital printing inks are mainly divided into four types: dispersion, reactive, acid and paint inks. In the current market, dispersion ink accounts for about 60%, activity accounts for about 30%, acid accounts for about 7%, and paint accounts for about 2%.

Disperse inks are currently mainly used for thermal transfer printing. The main component is low-temperature disperse dyes. The digital printing process is simple and no sewage is discharged. The thermal transfer market is currently becoming saturated, and the future development trend of decentralized digital printing is to adopt the production mode of sheet cloth direct injection, use high-temperature disperse dye inks, do not require thermal transfer paper, and reduce production costs.

The active digital printing process is the most mature, and the future development direction is to further increase the printing speed, mainly through the assembly of more high-speed industrial nozzles. The other direction is widening, widening to 3.2 m to meet the needs of the home textile market.

1. Huge room for development of paint and ink

Pigment printing has many advantages and has been widely used in the field of traditional printing. At present, more than 50% of the printed fabrics in the world are processed by the pigment printing process, but in the field of digital printing, the proportion of coating applications is still quite low. Take the roll-to-roll high-speed digital printing machine (printing speed higher than 300 m2/h) as an example. The mainstream models generally use reactive, acid and disperse inks, and the use of paint inks may account for less than 5%. Only in the field of garment digital printing, the use of paint ink is relatively large.

Pigment ink can be used for digital printing of almost all fabrics, especially suitable for blended fabrics, and many types of blended fabrics can only be printed by pigment inks. The advantage of paint digital printing is that the process is simple. After printing, the finished product can be processed directly through high-temperature baking. Generally, there is no need for washing, no sewage discharge, and it is a truly energy-saving and environmentally friendly textile printing method.

2. Development trends of printing ink

In recent years, with the enlargement of printing ink supply, ink price competition has gradually intensified. Some leading ink manufacturers have begun to develop differentiated products, and several new inks have come out.