Transportation Printing Essay, Research Paper

Transportation Printing

Man s urge to adorn his vesture and cloths of his environment, by agencies of

printing, dates back to the earliest of times. Over the ages and even more now it is

desirable to hold designs on our cloths. There are many ways of acquiring these designs

onto our vesture and cloth. One manner of making this is publishing on cloth. Printing is the

localised colour of fabrics ( Mock ) . It is characterized by usage of bringing systems that

apply precise sums of colorant to locations on the cloth. There are several printing

methods such as roller printing, screen printing, ink jet printing, and reassign printing.

This paper will concentrate on the method of transportation printing.

One of the latest and most interesting developments in the field of fabric printing

is the procedure known as transportation, or Sublistatic, printing. Transportation printing is a term

used to depict any procedure by which a coloured design may be transferred without image

deformation from a print on paper to a fabric or polymeric stuff. It is merely a heat

transportation method of modeling man-made cloths. The form is foremost printed on to a paper

web. This is done with particular inks that contain spread dyestuffs which sublime at a

temperature between 160 and 220 grades Fahrenheit. Sublimation is the procedure in

chemical science whereby a solid is converted into a vapour by heat and back once more into a solid on

chilling ( Storey ) . At this temperature the dyestuffs have small affinity for the paper bearer,

but a high affinity for the cloth to be printed and therefore the image is transferred from the

paper to the cloth. There are many advantages of transportation printing.

The bulk of polyester, acrylic, acetate and triacetate fibres are suited for the

transportation procedure. Fabrics woven or knitted with up to thirty percent natural fibre mixtures

besides react good to reassign printing. It is besides easy to publish uninterrupted cloth, cut pieces of

to the full fashioned garments, or even the made-up garments themselves, with a rotary or level

imperativeness calendering machine. More advantages include flexibleness, quality, and the fact that

bonded cloth can be printed after the bonding has taken topographic point. To run a transportation print

order entails the puting up of a calender, which is a speedy operation. All that has to be

done is turning the dial to the right temperature and proper velocity. The paper and cloth

is put through the calender and printing Begins. All the steaming and rinsing necessary

for wet printing produces fabric shrinking of merely 8-12 per centum. Seconds created by

erratums, smearing, or other jobs run 5-8 per centum ( Printing guide ) . Waste through

look intoing sampling and managing tallies less than 1 % ( Printing guide ) . These Numberss are

all significantly low. Quality is merely natural to reassign printing. Paper is easier to publish

than cloth, and intaglio printing printing gives better consequences than screen printing. One serious

drawback to the printing of this type of fabric used to be the sum of deformation that

resulted. Now, chevrons, cheques, and other geometric forms are all easy come-at-able by

the transportation procedure. Obviously transfer publishing did non cryptically appear out of the

blue without any precursors. Transportation prints on fabrics have been produced in assorted

signifiers for atleast a century.

Development

In 1953, an Italian procedure, The Star transportation printing procedure was introduced by

Stampa Tessuti Artistici of Milan ( Miles ) . This was a direct and true precursor of

transportation printing as we know it today. The paper was all photogravure printed and chiefly

transferred onto natural silk and highly all right quality cotton. The transportation paper was at

foremost in cut sheets. It was passed between force per unit area rollers at changing temperatures. The

large disadvantage of the Star method was that a normal repair procedure was besides necessary

after transference, and this made it really expensive and non-competitive. Today we have

more modern engineerings.

Transportation Techniques

In 1960, Noel Deplasse started experimenting and in 1965 Filatures Masurel

registered the name Sublistatic when mentioning to the merchandises of other houses. Deplasse

became Director of Society Sublistatic and it took about four old ages before the company

reached its full commercial extremum. In 1970, Bemrose, an old British photogravure printing

house, decided to travel into the transportation concern with their ain patents. The two extremely

secret facets of the procedure, and those which differ somewhat from house to tauten, are the

composing of the disperse print paste and the deepness of the scratching on the

rollers ( Miles ) . Transfer paper can be printed by four different methods: photogravure,

flexography, lithography, and screen printing. The first two procedures are by the far the

most widely used. Photogravure at first led the field perchance merely because the Gallic

house, Provoust Masurel, had the machinery. However, in the early 1970s flexography

made great paces into the transportation concern, and in fact could bring forth 90 per centum of the

designs being used ( Storey ) . Lithographic printing from level home bases is merely suited for

non-continuous designs. Screen publishing besides histories for really small of the market.

There are fundamentally two groups of advantages in the transportation procedure, those impacting

design and those for industry.

Since the design is foremost printed on paper, one does non hold to trust on the ability

of the cloth surface to accept certain effects. With all other methods of publishing the fabric

construction is really of import. Now though, the design needs merely to be something which

can be printed on paper, hence giving few restrictions. This gives freedom to the

interior decorator. It is possible now to acquire elaborate printing from trichrome photographically

separated positives and to bring forth an infinite figure of tonic and colour effects in this

manner ( Storey ) . Besides interesting and valuable from the design point of view is the fact that

exact adjustment of colourss is achieved at the paper phase. The photogravure printing machines

employ electronic colour registries which control enrollment. This means that some of the

best work produced by the transportation method can hold the all right item and preciseness of colour

tantrum associated with the work seen in many of the old nineteenth-century form

books ( Storey ) .

Kniting

The are many advantages of transportation printing in industry, notably in the knitwork

industry. Knitted cloths about ever show the pressman with a job. Good attention has

to be taken non to widen the fabric before gumming it down and besides to gum down

firmly. It is hard to acquire exact colour enrollment owing to a inclination of the fabric to

progress along the print tabular array during printing. With the transportation method all the colourss are

printed at one operation, giving a aggressively defined and accurate print. This advantage

applies to woven fabric as good. From the point of running a fabric concern there are

several points in favour of utilizing the transportation procedure. No particular accomplishments are needed to

operate either the traffic circle or the level calenders used in publishing off the fabric. Both types of

calender are cheap pieces of equipment. Add to these qualities the fact that the

transportation method needs no subsidiary printing equipment, and that no stocks of dyes or any

other chemicals are needed. It is besides an highly clean procedure chiefly due to it being a

dry technique. To the knitted garment industry, the transportation procedure has the added virtue

non merely of being able to publish the dorsum and forepart of a garment at the same clip, but being

able to heat set at the same clip as good. Orders can normally be met in a short clip. It is

these qualities of velocity and adaptability which are among the most sought after in this

competitory epoch.

Photogravure

The method used for doing the intaglio printing rollers varies really small from that of the

production of the photographically etched machine. The chief differences are that the

cylinders are frequently of Ag instead than Cu. Silver is the best metal for giving a all right

surface. The positives are all photographed through highly all right screens, so bring forthing

rollers capable of publishing all the nuances of tone and colour associated with modern

photogravure work. Conventional intaglio printing rollers have all the cells or points of the same

size but changing deepnesss, and so can bring forth all the changing tones from one

colour ( Symposium ) . It has been found that for usage in transportation publishing the difficult point

method is better, the cells are of differing breadths but of the same deepness ( Symposium ) .

This type of scratching non merely makes a good terminal merchandise, but means that the cylinders

can be etched automatically. They are rotated in a closed armored combat vehicle of acid for a mensural

clip and brought out etched to a right controlled deepness. It is really of import that the

etching is non excessively deep because this would intend that excessively much colour would be transferred

to the fabric, with a possible loss of speed. When all the cylinders are completed, they

are fitted in place in the intaglio printing printing machine. This is unlike the fabric roller

publishing machine in that the cylinders are non arranged unit of ammunition a cardinal force per unit area bowl, but

one after the other in a horizontal line. Each colour must be dried before the following is

printed because there is a great trade of close colour work and paper is non absorptive as

cloth is. Each roller is supplied with ink, has the excess scrapped off by the physician blade

and prints the paper, which so goes up vertically to be dried before coming down once more

to be printed with the following colour ( Storey ) . When printed, the colourss on the paper do non

even remotely resemble the eventual fabric and so it is obvious that

the transportation pressman

must be skilled at fiting and trying. This trouble is being overcome by the

collection of a turning scope of standard sunglassess. After being checked for defects the

paper is so injure up. Another interesting characteristic worth adverting is that single-color

fabrics can be produced from paper printed by agencies of a specially engraved cylinder.

This paper gives to the fabric a solid shadiness dyeing consequence. The right matching of printed

and kick fabrics can be found. Anyone who has experienced the troubles of acquiring a

piece dyed shadiness to fit a printed cloth will readily appreciated the significance of

this ( Miles ) .

Restrictions

There are some restrictions to the transportation method. One of these being that it is

merely truly successful on polyester, polymeric amide and acrylic fibres or blends, and on ethanoate

and triacetate ( Storey ) . There has been some unfavorable judgment of the speed belongingss on nylon

6-6 and triacetates and it is frequently felt that they are better if steamed afterwards. The

transportation paper is reasonably dearly-won and yardage printing does non go economic until after

10s thousand paces. A figure of houses ran a committee printing service for the paper,

every bit good as developing their ain aggregation for sale. Transfer printing as a method has

surely non lived up to outlooks and many companies became bankrupt. This was

partially due to the disillusion with dual knit polyester and the move back to rayon

and cotton ( Symposium ) . Experiments in reassigning onto these fibres continue.

Flexographic Printing

The thought of cutting alleviation images in gum elastic has been used of many old ages for the

printing of corrugated paper and wadding instances. It is merely in the last 10 old ages or so that it

has begun to be used in cylinder signifier for Duplex printing of supplying cloths. Gobden

Chadwick Limited produced a machine for wallpaper work and reassign printing. In the

transportation publishing field it portions about equal popularity with photogravure work. It was

the coming of polyethyne in the packaging industry that foremost aroused involvement in this type

of machine. Probably the two chief grounds for the sudden addition in the usage and

development of the method are the progresss both in gum elastic engineering, and in modeling

techniques ( Robinson ) . Aside from these grounds, transportation publishing itself is going so

much more popular than was anticipated. It has provided a large mercantile establishment and inducement for

development.

For whichever industry they are intended, the patterned cylinders are made in one

of two ways. The form can be cut straight into the surface of the gum elastic roller. Several

gum elastic stereos are made and fixed with adhesive onto the surface of a gum elastic cylinder.

Some designs need a combination of the two types of cylinder.

When doing a cylinder by direct film editing, the full size positive is first wrapped

round the gum elastic cylinder, which has been coated with photographic emulsion, and the

form is photographed onto this cylinder ( Storey ) . The cylinder is so placed on a

spindle and the cutter moves off the outer bounds of the forms to be cut off, and so

removes the background to a deepness considered sufficient for the usage to which the

peculiar roller will be put. It is of import that the walls of the alleviation forms should be

cut inclining out at an angle alternatively of vertically, to guarantee sufficient support at the base.

Bing that it is really easy for a positive to writhe out of place somewhat when it is wound

around the cylinder, subsequent colour rollers have their forms printed onto them. This

ensures that if there is a defect, each cylinder will still fit up with the others in the set.

To do a cylinder built up from a series of gum elastic stereos, each colour separation

is photographed on to a Zn home base and acid-etched. Bakelite pulverization is dusted over the

cast before puting it in the imperativeness in order to maximise the deepness of the finished stereo.

A piece of unvulcanised gum elastic of the right size is so placed in the imperativeness in contact

with the cast and so heat and force per unit area vulcanize and organize the gum elastic ( Miles ) . From

there it has to be cured. All the stereos are so placed into right repetition places

around a gum elastic roller and fixed with an adhesive. The rollers so have to be cut profoundly

by manus. When the design is finished with, the gum elastic can be turned off and the roller can

be used once more.

Equally far as transportation printing is concerned, most of the flexographic printing

machines are suited for six colourss, and are of the individual feeling cylinder type. This

feeling cylinder is of steel and is really heavy. It is finely surfaced and measured as to

be really exact in diameter. A gum elastic roller rotates in the colour trough and so transfers its

colour to an anilox cylinder which in bend supplies a controlled sum of colour to the

pattern roller. The anilox roller has a steel nucleus lined with Cu. When the machine

tallies at about 200 pess per minute, it is unneeded to aerate dry between colourss. If the

machine is to be run around 300 pess per minute it is indispensable to hold a warm air desiccant

unit installed between each colour station. The sum of colour can be varied merely by

altering the velocity of the gum elastic inking roller. An of import point to observe in flexographic

transportation printing is the quality of paper needed. It is excessively absorptive it will non give up

sufficient dyestuff on sublimating. If the surface is excessively difficult it will do a pressing out of

colour, taking to subsequent tailing in the print on fabric ( Miles ) . Flexography has a

portion to play in Durex direct cloth printing every bit good as transportation work. Flexographic

cylinders are used in the English Calico machine. This machine was constructed by the

Stalwart Engineering Company and was subsequently sold. Merely three machines were built. The

printing cylinders are arranged in a perpendicular signifier, so the running of the machine is simple.

Although really accurate enrollment of colourss is impossible with this agreement, it is

well better than the ordinary Duplex, and has the advantage that when pigments

are used the sum of colour deposited on the fabric is less than from the Alijaba machine,

which means that the fabric is much less stiff ( Storey ) . Flexography was slow to take off

in the United States, but now computerized optical maser film editing is being used for the production

of the cylinders.

Machinery

There are three basic types of machinery available for the transportation printing of

fabric stuffs. They are: flat-bed imperativenesss, uninterrupted high production machines, and

vacuity transportation machines. Flat-bed imperativenesss range from really simple units to the more

comply extremely productive theoretical accounts holding conveyer or rotary supply Stationss. In the

simple machines a top metal home base is maintained at a certain temperature and is lowered to

imperativeness the paper into good contact with the garment. Transportation of the print is obtained in

less than a minute. Uniformity of temperature and force per unit area are of import, and different

makers have used several systems to accomplish these demands. Continuous

transportation printing machines are available in several signifiers. The most common is the type

where the paper and fabric base on balls face to confront around a het cylinder or calender while

contact between the paper and the het surface is maintained by controlled force per unit area

from and eternal cover. Production rates up to 1300 metres per hr are possible,

depending upon the way length of the cloth in contact with the het cylinder. An

indispensable component in printing by this method is an even temperature distribution over the

heated cylinder surface to avoid alterations in colour across the fabric breadth. Both flat-bed

imperativenesss and cylinder machines can be made to run under conditions of partial or

complete vacuity. By utilizing a finely perforated cylinder which can be maintained at an

internal force per unit area lower than atmospheric force per unit area, air can be made to flux through the

print paper and cloth ( Miles ) . This enhances the dye transportation rate and improves cloth

incursion. The cloth is held against the cylinder surface and the force per unit area difference

ensures contact with the paper without the usage of a backup cover. With the

Kannegiesser Vacumat machine, heat is supplied externally through infrared warmers

placed around the cylinder. The chief advantages of this method are the absence of cloth

compaction and glazing and the better incursion of thick cloth and low heap stuff.

For high heap cloths there may be some weirdo or motion of the paper relation to the

cloth, with loss of design definition. Production rates are of the order of 200 metres per

hr ( Miles ) .

Into the Future

Recently, huge alterations and developments have taken topographic point in the field of

fabric printing. These alterations are about wholly related to cybernation. The velocity,

truth and flexibleness which can ensue from these automated systems are extremely

desirable qualities, peculiarly at this clip. Quick response, the phrase used to bespeak a

system which allows the manufacturer to react instantly to the demands of the

consumer of client, has become the war cry. Printing was and still is a really of import

component of bring forthing a cloth. With new techniques being discovered all the clip, it will

be continued for a long clip.

Mentions

1. Robinson, P. Exploring Fabric Printing, 1970, Mills and Boon Limited.

2. Symposium on Transfer Printing, March 24-25, 1976, New Jersey, Textile Research

Institute.

3. A Transportation Printing Guide, 1979, Yves Mahe.

4. Storey, J. Manual of Textile Printing, 1992, New York, Thames and Hudson.

5. Miles, L. Textile Printing, 1981, England, The Dyers Company Publications Trust