This article gives an overview on elastomeric rollers used in printing (excluding fuser and foam rollers). The focus will be on rollers used for digital printing technologies, especially electro-photography and ink-jet. Properties needed for rollers for these printing technologies will be described as well as current technologies to meet these demands. A focus here is electrical conductivity. This includes methods to achieve conductivity in elastomers and dependence of conductivity on several important parameters as for example electric field, function of time, temperature, humidity, and contact force.Finally some required properties for rollers for non-digital printing technologies as offset and gravure will be outlined and compared with those for digital printing. Such properties are for example swelling behavior, dynamic properties, and electrical conductivity.
Gerhard Bartscher, Johann Weinert, Uwe Zettl, Barbara Loebich, "State of the Art in Elastomeric Rollers for Printing" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies (NIP22), 2006, pp 576 - 580, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2006.22.1.art00068_2