Inkjet printing technology originated in the late 19th century. It rose in the 1990s. Its equipment has the characteristics of low cost and good environmental protection. It has become one of the most abundant and extensive technical means in the field of digital printing. It mainly includes: small inkjet printers, large format inkjet printers, inkjet printing equipment, digital printing equipment, etc. As a product of digitalization and computer technology, inkjet printing covers some of the printing markets that cannot be covered by traditional printing and gradually expands to many fields. The market prospect is very broad.
First, the basic principle of inkjet printing
Inkjet printing is a non-contact, pressureless, non-printing printing system that consists of a system controller. Inkjet controller, nozzle, substrate drive mechanism and other components, the ink under the control of the inkjet controller, from the nozzle of the nozzle is printed on the substrate, the color inkjet printer usually has high temperature and pressure printing and room temperature atmospheric pressure type Print two ways. The former is represented by Canon's bubble technology and HP's thermal technology, which is represented by Epson's ultra-micro piezoelectric printing technology. The thermal method bubble relies on the heat of a small resistor to evaporate the surrounding ink and generate bubbles. The expansion of the bubble causes the ink to be ejected from the nozzle and reach the substrate. After the ejection, the bubbles disappear, and the new ink is sucked from the ink tank to produce continuous Bubble work. The micro-piezoelectric inkjet technology will put the piezoelectric chip on top of the inkjet nozzle, add a little current to the chip, generate vibration, and eject the ink by vibration.
Second, the status of China's inkjet printing technology
The ink jet printing industry in China is not far from the starting point for foreign countries, but there is still a small gap between R&D, production, sales, and applications compared with developed countries such as the United States and Japan. In terms of regional distribution, it mainly concentrates on economically developed Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing. At present, the application of domestic inkjet printing is in a polarization situation. At one end is a low-end market. Most of the equipment used is a non-production inkjet printer, and most of the printing jobs are short-lived black-and-white activities, with a small amount of color live. At the other end is the high-end market. Most of the inkjet printing equipment used by practitioners is a production-type digital ink-jet printer. In addition, not only are ultra-short-color prints, but also a lot of personalized, variable-data-printed color prints. . Customers of such digital printing companies pay more attention to quality and service, and have high requirements for color and printing quality.
Third, the advantages and characteristics of inkjet printing
1, inkjet printing is a full digital printing, completely out of the cumbersome procedure of the traditional printing process, the requirements for color overprinting and trapping is not high, do not need to consider the accuracy of registration, job preparation time is short, the rapid response to the market, job production With a short cycle, production of digital proofs and short-run jobs can be completed with very high time efficiency and cost efficiency.
2. To achieve variable data printing and custom printing, the image information can be changed at any time to meet the user's short-run print jobs and personalized printing needs, such as: personal albums, product descriptions, data, test products, packaging samples.
3, a print, reduce waste, printing services more flexible, usually have an advantage in a thousand prints.
4. Digital features make it easier to introduce digital integration technologies such as digital asset management, automated workflows, and color management.
5, can achieve remote printing, remote printing services through the Internet transmission, especially for cross-regional chain printing fast printing.
6, most of the inkjet printing technology is non-contact printing, can be copied on a variety of printing materials, such as a variety of commercial production line variable code printing.
7, digital web inkjet printing equipment can not be limited by the length of paper, can achieve large-format, panoramic works of copy.
Fourth, the factors that affect the quality of inkjet printing
Measuring the quality of ink jet equipment print quality has the following factors:
1. Color management software: The printer driver should be able to provide rich color management functions, because the printer is to use the four primary colors of the RGB primary colors in the optical industry, CMYK. Only when the colors are accurately converted, can we obtain formal high-quality results.
2. Print Resolution: The print resolution means that multiple ink dots can be printed on a width of 1 inch, regardless of whether the ink dots overlap. The finer the ink and the color scale points are, the higher the resolution is. It's better.
3, printing speed: Inkjet printer and computer connection data transmission speed, buffer memory size is the bottleneck to solve the printing speed, and inkjet print head width and number of nozzles per color, is an important parameter to determine the print speed.
4, color scale: color inkjet printer mouth is the basic requirement is to have accurate color reproduction, the current color inkjet printing with four colors to eight colors large color ink jet printing, but also for spot color printing, which is great Meet the industry's need for full-color reproduction.
5, nozzle control system: ink dot is sprayed onto the substrate through the nozzle, the nozzle position and speed drive system gear, transmission belt, electronic control system, etc. must ensure the precise position of the nozzle.
6, ink: ink jet printing ink dye ink, pigment ink, oily ink, UV ink and so on. Dye ink will fade under UV irradiation, not waterproof, suitable for indoor prints; Pigment ink has good lightfastness, water fastness, but the color performance is not satisfactory; oily ink is mainly used for outdoor product trademarks, advertising, etc. Good water, UV, and abrasion resistance; UV curing inks are widely used due to their good media adaptability, fast drying, and colorful colors.
7. Print materials: Inkjet printers are selective and supportive for print media. The differences in the quality of various print materials such as whiteness, fineness, and ink absorption will have a great impact on the output. The color ink-jet printing material is a special printing process on the surface of ordinary printing materials, and has excellent ink-absorption capacity. When printing with high precision, there is no ink flowing and flowering phenomenon, and the ink-absorption dots are real without mutual strings, so as to completely maintain Original colors and sharpness.