At present, a large number of ceramic tiles in China are produced by flat screen printing and circular screen printing. However, these two printing processes require a large amount of preparation time and a large amount of labor input. Although the development of this industrial printing process has been very mature, the method of printing screen close to ceramic tiles will have an important impact on the output and quality of printed ceramic tiles.
When we observe and analyze from the perspective of accelerating market changes, we can also see that due to the increasing global business competition and the rising cost pressure, the traditional process of producing ceramic tiles cannot keep up with the development and changes of the situation. Although the industrial silk printing has many advantages over the manual printing operation, there are still many defects in this batch and rigid copying method. Therefore, the ceramic industry soon realized the advantages of non-contact printing technology, especially the piezoelectric on-demand inkjet technology will bring great benefits to this industry.
The application of inkjet technology can improve the production speed of printing process, reduce the cost, maintain and improve the quality of ceramic printing products, support the versatility of products and increase the output. In short, inkjet technology can meet the requirements of different markets, paving the way for new opportunities and new applications. Although the digital jet printing technology can not completely replace the traditional production process at present, practice has proved that the use of digital jet printing technology can make the printing of ceramic tiles obtain a lot of benefits.
At present, various markets have put forward higher requirements for shortening the production process of ceramic tiles. Ceramic tile manufacturers have to seek printing and printing equipment that can provide high printing image quality, high production efficiency and multi-function. Compared with other transfer printing systems, digital inkjet technology has more advantages while meeting these needs. These advantages include simplified production operation, improved image accuracy, extended working life and wider application of ink.
Compared with the screen printing ink, the ink used for ink-jet printing has a lower viscosity, which makes how to control the ink with high solid content (i.e. high pigment content) while maintaining uninterrupted and non-contact ink-jet printing a decisive factor for success, and also a challenge for the ink-jet solution suppliers. In the past 30 years, piezoelectric inkjet technology has brought great benefits to printing system manufacturers and end users. It is specially designed to meet the harsh requirements of industrial production, and at the same time, it is designed to take into account the harsh environmental conditions.
Among them, the print head is widely accepted by businesses and users because of its ability to continuously high-frequency ink jet and apply to a variety of inks, and also because of the advantages of high accuracy and high speed. Drop drop accuracy is the basis for obtaining high-quality images. Low drop drop accuracy will lead to blurred and defective images.
The excellent characteristics of the print head come from the company's patented design, which gives each nozzle channel a piezoelectric excitation source, which is physically isolated from the liquid channel. The design method of separating the piezoelectric excitation source from the ink used for inkjet enables the print head to apply a variety of formulated inks, including conductive ink, and enables all nozzles on the print head to be individually addressed and excited, that is, the ejection droplets can be simultaneously excited, so that the ejection droplets can fall on the predetermined position with high frequency, straight line and accuracy with the inherent low mutual interference characteristics between the channels. The inkjet printing equipment based on the piezoelectric inkjet printhead with full load working effect has inherent high-speed characteristics, which makes it capable of supporting higher production requirements.
While maintaining the straightness of the ink jet, this ability to continuously stimulate the ink jet at high frequency (above 40kh) gives machine designers more freedom, allowing a wider gap distance between the nozzle and the ceramic tile or other substrate. The gap here refers to the distance between the print head nozzle and the substrate surface. The increase in gap distance provides greater flexibility to accommodate different substrate grades and surface roughness. The increase in the gap distance also reduces the risk that the print head may accidentally contact the substrate surface and be damaged during printing. When two different print heads are used for actual ink-jet printing at the same gap distance, the equipment that works at the same high-speed printing speed, in which the print heads with higher droplet speed and better ink-jet linearity work, obtains significantly better picture quality.