1 1 INK JET PRINTING ON TEXTILES

With the increased pressure from developing textile markets in the Far East the textile printer in Europe, Japan and the USA must respond with both increased quality and shorter time of response. This means supplying new design concepts, sample and production printed fabrics in a wide range of colour ways in a time frame unheard of a few years ago. One area that has seen development is in the pre-printing area with increasing use of CAD/CAM systems and digital printing systems,with ink jet printing systems being targeted.Since the 1991 ITMA digital textile printing systems have been available that can be used for proofing and small sample production. A considerable number of major research projects ( in Europe, Japan and the USA) aimed at taking digital textile printing to the full production scale are underway. The present paper will review the latest development in the digital ink jet printing of textiles and highlight the future direction this technology will take in textile printing