A set of water-based, pigment inks with binder was formulated for ink-jet printing onto textiles. The inks formulated have good color strength for printing onto various fabrics such as cotton, cotton blends, polyester etc. with heat curing at 160 C for 2-3 mins. The ink formulations were optimized to adress the needs of reliably printing with ink jet print heads and the textgile print properties. In additions to process colors, spot colors (Red, Green, Blue, Orange and Violet) and tone colors (LC, LM and Gray) were formulated to capture variety of applications. The inks were tested for reliability using Epson desktop and wide format printers. The print properties were tested on both prepared and unprepared fabrics to see the impact of commercially available pre-treatment on print properties. Results are shared and recommendations made to obtain the print properties needed.
Deverakonda Sarma, Steve Liker, "Water-based Pigment Inks for Textile Printing" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP21), 2005, pp 245 - 245, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2005.21.1.art00069_1