Issues Impacting the Design and

Development of an Ink Jet Printer

for Textiles*
Brad Hunting, Raymond Puffer and Stephen Derby
New York State Ctr. for Adv. Technology in Automation, Robotics
and Manufacturing and Mech. Eng’g., Aeronautical Eng’g.,
and Mechanics Dept. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
and Leo Loomie, Artisan Textiles, Albany, New York

Abstract vals. This change to a demand activated manufacturing

environment is pushing the textile industry to respond
Unlike paper printing technology, which has advanced with very short lead times.
rapidly in pace with business and information systems, The ability to manufacture printed textiles with short
modern textile printing methods have changed little in lead times is inhibited by the printing process. In 1992
the past four decades. This paper explores the applica- the world wide textile print production was estimated at
tion of current ink jet printing technology to textiles and 19.5 billion linear meters and the 1995 production pre-
discusses the requirements of an ink jet printer suitable dicted to be almost 21 billion1. Of those nearly 20 bil-
for textile printing. lion meters, between 75 and 78%1,2 were printed using
The primary motivations for adapting modern pa- rotary or flat screen printing technologies. The screen
per printing methods to textiles are achieve print on de- printing process by its very nature is incompatible with
mand capability, enable economical short runs, and to short lead times. The typical process of designing a new
enhance textile print design capabilities. Demand acti- pattern, manufacturing screens, printing a sample run,
vated and just in time manufacturing requirements are and then entering production requires between four and
pushing the textile industry to embrace more responsive sixteen weeks. The cost of entering production requires
printing methods. Modern paper printing technologies minimum production print runs of two to three thousand
can be adapted to printing on textiles if a number of is- yards. Once screens are available the time required to
sues are addressed and resolved. change over a screen printing machine for a new run of
Significant issues include drop generation technolo- three thousand yards only allows for a machine utiliza-
gies, fluid handling, fluid properties, dye chemistry, output tion of sixty-six percent2.
formats, web handling, throughput and data rates, effec- Taking a cue from the paper printing industry, where
tive resolution, image manipulation, and color correction. print on demand capability presently exists, the textile
Many of these issues have been studied for application to industry is investigating technologies that would pro-
paper printing and some previous work can be adapted to vide similar capabilities for printing on textiles. The two
textile printing. Areas where textile and paper printing re- primary technologies being investigated for on demand
quirements differ significantly will require development of printing of textiles are ink jet and xerography1,2,3,4,5. In-
new methodologies and technologies. vestigation into ink jet printing for textiles has been on-
going for over ten years and is presently being attempted
Introduction by major players in both the paper and textile printing
industries2,4. Given the potential economic benefit of on
The textile industry, like many other industries, is chang- demand textile printing and the maturity of paper print-
ing to respond to consumer requirements for fast, cus- ing technology one may wonder why on demand textile
tomized products. Real time point-of-sale information printing capability does not presently exist. There are
is allowing retailers to more accurately gauge consumer many technical issues that will have to be addressed be-
desires and place smaller orders at more frequent inter- fore an on demand textile printer can be brought to mar-
ket. In particular, ink jet printing of textiles will require
investigation and development of appropriate drop gen-
Originally published in Proc. of IS&T’s Eleventh International
Congress on Advances in Non-Impact Printing Technologies, erators, colorants, cloth handlers, and image processing
October 29-November 3, 1995, Hilton Head, South Carolina. techniques.

Chapter 1—General —5
 Drop Generation to prevent degradation by the ink. Thermal DOD drop
generators rely on boiling of the fluid in the channel to
Ink jet drop generating technology is usually classified energize the fluid and produce a drop, Figure 3.
as either continuous or drop on demand (DOD). Con-
tinuous drop generators produce a continuous stream of
drops that are either allowed to strike the print media Piezoelectric Element
and produce a mark or are diverted to a catch trough and
are recycled back to the main fluid reservoir, Figure 1.

From Reservoir
Figure 2. Piezoelectric Drop Generator

Thermal Element
Figure 1. Continuous Ink Jet
Figure 3. Thermal Drop Generator
Continuous ink jet drops are typically generated by
modulating a pressurized fluid stream with a piezoelec- Severe temperatures and pressures are generated as
tric transducer. The drop rates of continuous ink jets can the fluid is flash heated and as the bubbles produced by
reach as high as one mega-hertz, allowing for very high the boiling collapse. The cavitation pressure and ther-
print rates. A disadvantage of continuous ink jets is that mal cycling significantly reduce the life of the thermal
drops are being produced even when none are required drop generator. Where piezoelectric DOD drop genera-
to print. The continuous exposure of the ink to the envi- tors have an expected life of one to ten billion drops,
ronment changes the ink properties through evaporation thermal DOD drop generators have an expected life of
and exposes the ink to dirt and contaminates. The ten to one hundred million drops6.
recycled ink must be filtered and the fluid properties To achieve acceptable print rates large numbers of drop
monitored to insure continued jettability. Another, com- generators are required. A drop generator with a small
plication associated with continuous ink jet is the de- footprint is required. Piezoelectric drop generators are
flection of the drops. Both air jet and electrostatic charge much larger than thermal drop generators with equivalent
deflectors have been implemented. nozzle counts. Thermal drop generators, which are pro-
Drop on demand drop generators produce a drop only duced by methods similar to semiconductor manufactur-
when commanded by the controlling electronics to pro- ing, have begun to incorporate portions of the driving
duce a mark on the print media. Advantages of DOD ink electronics into the nozzle substrate7 further decreasing the
jets over continuous ink jets are simpler fluid handling, nozzle footprint.
since recirculation systems are not required, simpler
drive electronics compared to charge and deflection sys- Fluid Handling
tems, and reduced exposure of the ink to the environ-
ment. The major disadvantage of DOD drop generators Continuous ink jet printers pressurize the ink and eject it at
is the low drop rate, less than ten kilohertz and typically the printhead in a continuous stream. The unused potion of
between three and five kilohertz. DOD ink jets rely on the stream is recycled back to the reservoir. The ink
surface tension and capillary action to refill the firing handling system must pressurize the jetted ink and capture
chambers after each drop. Drop rate is limited primarily and filter the unused ink. Drop on demand ink jet printers
by fluid dynamics of refilling. rely on the physical properties of the ink to keep the drop
DOD drops are typically generated by either piezo- generators primed. This method is only effective over a
electric or thermal energization. Mechanical and surface small pressure range, typically a few tenths of a psi. The
acoustic wave energization have been proposed but have ink handling system must maintain the reservoir pressure
not yet seen widespread use. Piezoelectic DOD drop gen- within the proper window for the fluid properties to be
erators rely on bulk motion of the piezo elements to en- effective.
ergize the fluid and produce a drop. The piezoelectric
material is activated by applying an electric field across Fluid Properties
the material. The electric field is typically applied by
charging electrodes plated to opposing sides of the piezo Both continuous and drop on demand drop generators
material, Figure 2. require the fluid properties to remain within a small range
Typically one of the electrodes is in contact with to insure jettability and compatibility with the printing
the ink and must be of an appropriate material or coated hardware. Physical properties, such as viscosity and sur-

6—Recent Progress in Ink-Jet Technologies

face tension, as well as chemical properties, such as pH, per second or less. A one hundred dpi printer printing at
solubility, and evaporation, must be controlled. Varia- ten inches per second over a sixty inch width using four
tions in fluid properties effect the consistency of the colors would require a sustained data rate of twenty-four
drops generated and result in satellites, variations in drop megabits per second. If the resolution were increased to
sizes, and variations in nozzle exit velocities8. Variations three hundred dpi, the required data rate would increase
in drop size affect cloth saturation and resulting color. to two hundred and sixteen megabits per second. If a
Variations in exit velocity affect print resolution by lim- drop on demand drop generator capable of generating
iting the accuracy of the drop placement9. ten thousand drops per second were available, it would
require twenty-four hundred drop generators at one hun-
Dye Chemistry dred dpi or twenty-one point six thousand at three hun-
dred dpi. At one hundred dpi there are ten thousand drops
In order to produce an ink jet printed textile to compete per square inch. If four drops are required in each pixel
with a screen printed textile, the finished product will need for color or cloth saturation the total number of drops
to be of comparable or better quality. The printer and print- per square inch rises to forty thousand. If the resolution
ing fluid will need to produce a permanent coloration of is raised to three hundred dpi, the total number of drops
the textile with comparable fastness, durability, and hand. per square inch is three hundred and sixty thousand. To
Previous textile ink jet sampling machines have not suc- print three thousand linear yards of sixty inch wide cloth,
ceeded in doing so. Previous machines have concentrated there are almost two hundred and sixty billion drops at
on fluid properties for jettability not for textile dying. Sig- one hundred dpi and over two point three trillion drops,
nificant effort has been applied to the development of dyes at three hundred dpi. If a drop generator has a life of ten
and inks for ink jet printing of paper. Multiple patents have million to ten billion drops then between twenty-six and
been awarded for various inks and ink delivery systems10. two hundred and thirty thousand drop generators would
Over half of the textiles printed world wide are pig- be required, Table 1. This does not allow for any redun-
ment printed, with colorants being held to the fabric by a dancy and assumes a constant failure rate.
resin binder. The popularity of pigment printing stems from
the lack of a required post treatment. Reactive dyes typi- Table 1. Drop Generators Required to Print 3000 Yds at
cally require steaming or other fixing process. An ideal on 60” Width with 4 Drops per Pixel
demand printer would print with either pigments or dyes. dpi 100 300
drop life 107 1010 107 1010
Output Formats and Web Handling
total drops 259 billion 2.33 trillion
Textiles are produced in standard widths from forty-five total required 25,920 26 233,280 234
to one hundred twenty inches, most commonly between
sixty to seventy four inches. By far the most popular tex-
tiles printed are cotton and cotton-poly blends, which make Image Manipulation
up well over half of the market1. Textile stretch can range
from very little for felts and tight wovens to extreme for Most image design and layout for textiles occurs using
knits. If the printer operates via a raster method similar to custom software developed specifically to meet the needs
current paper technology, the textile will be required to of the textile designer. Spot color, palette reduction, and
increment under the printhead with intermittent motion. step and repeat are integral parts of the design process.
Alignment must be kept in the presence of dynamics of Typically the textile print designer works with a very small
starting and stopping a flexible material. color palette since each color in the image requires a sepa-
rate physical screen to reproduce. Textile print images typi-
Effective Resolution cally have very little color depth or tonal variations. The
designer of output for paper more often works with a
A typical screen printer has a resolution of fifty lines per CMYK process color space. This allows a large range of
inch. To produce the equivalent resolution on a dot matrix colors, including variations in color depth and tone, to be
printer, a printer resolution of one hundred drops per inch simulated while only using four distinct colorants. The
(dpi) would be required. To expand beyond the present tex- disadvantage of the CMYK process color space is the very
tile norm of spot color into continuous tone color, a mini- limited ability to reproduce deep rich colors that are eas-
mum resolution of three hundred dpi would be required. ily produced with the custom mixed colors used in screen
Higher printer resolutions contribute to tonal resolution printing. An ink jet printer for textiles should have the
rather than spatial resolution or image clarity, especially capability to print with custom mixed spot color and with
given the wicking and bleed characteristics of cloth and CMYK process colors. Design software to allow design-
the range of weight and density of available weaves. ing in either color space, spot or process, will be essen-
tial. Design software for ink jet textile printing should be
Throughput and Data Rates similar in use to traditional textile design software to ease
the transition from the tradition textile print design pro-
Rotary screen textile printers are capable of rates up to cess but must have the capability to extend into the pro-
fifty meters per minute or thirty-two inches per second. cess color design arena to allow migration to or inclusion
A typical operating speed would be closer to ten inches of process color in the design.

Chapter 1—General —7
 Color Correction *
This work has been funded by the New York State Energy
Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), Artisan Tex-
Designing prints for textiles using conventional four tiles, and the New York State Center for Advanced Technol-
color process color design tools will pose a significant ogy (CAT) in Robotics, Automation, and Manufacturing. The
CAT is partially funded by a block grant from the New York
challenge. Variations in the patterns and surface struc-
State Science and Technology Foundation.
ture of different weaves affect the tone, hue, and effec-
tive resolution of the image. As textile print designs begin
to exploit the tone and hue variations available with pro- References
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tions to place drops for color mixing11. 1995, pp. 73-79.
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difference in linear patterns in a print, are a significant 1992, pp. 422-424.
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Thermal Ink Jet Printhead Heater Design and its Effect
Conclusions on Heater Lifetime, IS&T 47th Annual Conference/ICPS
1994, pp. 583.
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provides clues as to how a textile print on demand sys- Annual Conference/ICPS 1994, pp. 584-586.
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have been studied in detail for paper printing and por- 11. W. L. Rhodes, The Influence of Halftone, Orientation on
tions of the technologies developed can be applied to Color Gamut and Registration Sensitivity, IS&T 46th
textile printing. Annual Conference 1993, pp. 180-182.

8—Recent Progress in Ink-Jet Technologies