Some Problems That Should Be Paid Attention to in Digital Inkjet Printing

The application of digital ink-jet printing technology has enabled breadth and depth development of fabric printing, changing the singleness into various types; changing the plane to three-dimensional; changing decoration to be practical. Makes the production form flexible, rich design materials, and personalized application methods. High-tech also meets modern requirements such as green environmental protection, energy saving, and water saving. Inkjet printing is developed based on the inkjet printing of paper. Therefore, some operating points and problems to be paid attention to in the use of inkjet printers can also be referred to in ink jet printing. Compared with paper inkjet, The diversity of fabric types and raw material categories, especially the specific properties such as the color fastness and feel of printed fabrics, make the difference between paper jet printing and fabric printing, and the problems in fabric inkjet printing will be more.

In order to create better results for digital inkjet printing, there are important issues to be aware of when using it.

(1) Ensure a good environment and proper use

Since inkjet printers are based on paper inkjet printers, their operating environment and other factors are similar to those of general color inkjet printers. To make the ink-jet printing capable of printing beautiful images, it is necessary to ensure that it is in the best state of work in order to ensure that the ink is in the best level of use, and to fully utilize the special properties of the ink. Therefore, to operate properly and be diligent in maintenance, it is necessary to strictly follow the instructions for use to complete the entire operation. In particular, it is necessary to develop proper opening and closing habits, and it is not allowed to operate arbitrarily or indiscriminately. Turning on and off the printer seems to be the simplest thing, but it has a lot to do with the maintenance of inkjet printers.

When the system is powered on or off, it is necessary to perform system initialization and detection, check whether the printer is ready, fill ink on the ink cartridge nozzle, and automatically clean the print head. To ensure normal operation, reduce the failure rate and eliminate hidden troubles, ensure the normal use of ink, reduce the loss of ink and other materials, and improve work efficiency. When the printer is powered on, it is not possible to forcibly disconnect the power plug from abnormal shutdown, which can easily cause the positioning failure of the print head. In order to ensure the good operation of the inkjet printing machine, the working environment is generally required to have a temperature of 15 to 35 degrees Celsius and a humidity of 20% to 80%, and to ensure that the environment is free from dust and static electricity. There are numerous tiny nozzles on the head of the inkjet printer, which are exposed to air when not in use. Since the size of the nozzle aperture is equivalent to the dust floating in the space, if the printer is in a poor working environment with a lot of dust, the fine nozzle can be easily contaminated and blocked by the dust. If the humidity in the room is too high, not only the parts of the machine are easily rusted, but even the nozzles are not guaranteed to be rusted. The temperature variation of the working environment of the printing machine should not be too large. This is because the inkjet printing machine not only contains a large number of metal components, but also contains a large number of engineering plastic components, and the nozzle aperture is very slim, if the ambient temperature changes too much, Thermal expansion of components can cause excessive wear on mechanical components, and changes in the size of the nozzle aperture can also affect print quality.

After the printing machine is working for a period of time, dust removal and maintenance are also required. The operator should know the basic knowledge of printing and dyeing, be sensitive to color light, have a certain appreciation ability for the handicrafts, be careful about the work, be serious, have a strong sense of responsibility, work with high enthusiasm and have a certain application of pattern design software.

(2) Use of high quality ink

In inkjet printing consumables, ink is the main factor affecting the quality of inkjet printing. Using unsatisfactory ink not only seriously affects the quality of printing, but also causes damage to the machine. The quality of the ink determines the quality of the printed image and also determines the life of the nozzle. Ink can be called the blood of the entire system, directly related to the quality of the entire print, it is for the output image of the true color, color performance, visual impact, fade resistance and even the life of the printer and the user's physical and mental health, etc. Has the most direct influence. The requirements for ink are generally the following:

1Color accurate, can achieve the original color.

2 The fineness of ink particles should be fine, otherwise it is easy to block the ink head.

3 The price of ink should be low, otherwise it will affect the promotion and use of digital printing.

At present, there are mainly two methods of digital ink jet printing, namely, YMCK ink jet printing (matrix type) based on high-precision nozzles, and pre-mixing methods in which dyes are pre-mixed into a certain color and sprayed onto fabrics. When using the YMCK method for printing, in order to obtain high-precision and smooth light-color transition color, high resolution must be required, which requires the fineness of the nozzle is small, while the requirements of the ink is also high, increase the ink jet speed It is more difficult, but the number of dyes used is relatively small, the basic color is four colors. The lattice type is a widely used printing method. Since the nozzle diameter of the nozzle is very small and the resolution of the printing is high, the viscosity, surface tension, inorganic salt content, and particle fineness of the dye are required to be very high.

(3) Pay attention to the maintenance of the ink cartridge and prevent ink leakage

The ink cartridge is an integrated product that spans many high-tech fields such as modern workers, materials, and microelectronics. The manufacturing process of ink and ink cartridges is highly technical and professional. Therefore, we must try our best to select original consumables with high quality to ensure perfection. The printing effect ensures the good operation of the machine and reduces the reject rate and failure rate. The use of compatible inks and ink cartridges, which are inexpensive and of poor quality, do not guarantee the quality of the prints, and are prone to malfunctions such as ink leakage. Leaked ink not only pollutes the working environment, but also can damage the machine and cause the fabric to be scrapped. Poor quality ink can also cause the nozzle to clog, cause the cartridge or nozzle to be scrapped, and even burn the driver chip. Every time the machine is used for the first time, the machine must perform a self-test to ensure that each time the self-test waveform test pattern is good at startup, the nozzles will be able to use this compatible ink for a long time.

Also, do not expose the cartridge to the air for long periods of time to avoid clogging of the printhead. Do not disassemble the ink cartridge in a dusty environment. When installing a new ink cartridge, you must clean the print head once. Do not touch the ink cartridge outlet with your hands to prevent impurities from entering the ink cartridge. Since the ink is conductive, if it is leaked on the circuit board, it should be wiped with anhydrous ethanol, and then dry and then electrified, otherwise it may damage the circuit components; do not drop the ink cartridge to prevent ink from leaking. Leaking ink is a common failure in inkjet printing, and it is also a matter of constant attention in inkjet printing. The main causes of ink leakage are:

1 Use filling ink to mask the intelligent chip of the machine's ink supply system so that it can't monitor the use of ink effectively. The information fed back by the chip is incomplete and cannot effectively guide the user to use ink to generate ink leakage.

2 Because there is always some air in the cartridge, the air pressure remains normal due to the presence of air holes. Too much ink is filled into the ink cartridge by the ink filling method, which destroys the pressure in the printer head and the airtightness of the ink cartridge, causes the pressure adjustment function to malfunction, the temperature in the ink cartridge rises, and the internal pressure is greater than the external atmospheric pressure, and the ink is printed from Sprayed out of the head, causing ink leakage.

3 The quality of the ink is not satisfactory. After a certain period of use, the quality of the ink is deteriorated, and large and small particles are generated. This not only corrodes the print head, but also causes the nozzle to clog without ink. When the machine vibrates strongly, ink leakage occurs.

4 When the ink is filled, the size of the air hole is damaged, and the size of the air hole is changed. When the speed of the machine is increased, the ink is ejected from the nozzle, causing ink leakage. In short, the problem of ink leakage is mainly caused by the use of filling and inferior ink. It not only has serious damage to the ink supply system, print heads, and machinery and equipment, but also has a small color gamut and impure color, which is prone to color shifts and does not guarantee image quality.

(4) Maintenance of major components such as the print head

In the intelligent print head, a micro-read/write memory or a smart chip is embedded to automatically adjust the working state of the ink jet printing so that the printing can maintain its optimum state, provide print head related information, and automatically save the ink jet data and history records. The remaining amount of ink, etc. For the print head, the print head cannot be removed from the host and placed alone; do not place it in a hot and humid environment for a long time to prevent evaporation of water in the ink to dry the ink and cause nozzle clogging; do not put the print head on the easy to produce Place static electricity so as not to damage the circuit board and the thermal elements in the nozzle due to static electricity; do not hit the nozzle and disassemble the nozzle; do not clean the nozzle with water so as not to block the nozzle; do not wipe the nozzle with face paper, lens paper, cloth, etc. Surface; Prevent oil, alcohol, etc. from dripping onto the nozzle to prevent solidification and blocking due to ink composition changes; do not blow air to the nozzle to prevent ink smearing or ink surface tension from affecting printing. Do not clean the printhead frequently when printing is normal, as it is not only very ink-consuming, but also tends to wear the printhead.

The print head may clog the nozzle due to long printing time, unused storage for a long time, improper use of ink, and use of inferior ink cartridges, affecting the print quality, or even causing the entire print head to be scrapped. If the nozzle is clogged during work, the print head must be cleaned. For some printheads that cannot be operated due to temporary nozzle clogging, the print function can be restored after normal maintenance, usually by simply using a simple flushing method. Most inkjet printers will automatically clean the print head at startup and have buttons to clean the print head. Therefore, for the normal printing, but the lack of strokes or color, or high-resolution image blur is slightly blocked, generally use the printer's own nozzle cleaning program can be resolved, so the lack of strokes or color is found to be poor When the nozzle is blocked, it should be cleaned with a cleaning program as soon as possible. This is the simplest and best maintenance method. Frequent ink filling or cleaning of the nozzle during the printing process, but the print effect is still poor or the print head nozzle is seriously blocked, the machine can not charge ink, or the printer refused to work this situation can only use manual cleaning method.

The following points should be noted when cleaning the print head:

1 Do not clean the nozzle with sharp objects, do not hit the nozzle, do not touch the nozzle with your hand;

2 It is not allowed to disassemble and install the nozzle in the charged state, and do not touch the electrical contacts of the printer with hands or other objects;

3 Do not remove the print head from the printer and place it alone. Do not place the print head in a dusty place. Although the manual cleaning method is not complicated, due to the need to disassemble the nozzle, the number of cleanings should not be too much and should not be too frequent, and the operator should pay attention not to contaminate the electrode part.

Source: China Garment Network