Digitally applying droplets onto the substrate enables new ways of finishing textiles. In this method microdroplets launched from ink-jet printing head are used as a transportation media for certain functional species. This technique has many advantages in comparison with traditional textile finishing methods like bath treatment. Precise control of the species distribution in the substrate enables development of new functional textiles, for expensive functional species it may give large cost saving, however one of most important can be reduction of waste production in manufacturing process. To gain all these advantages textile engineer needs to find optimal printing parameters to obtain desired ink distribution in the textile. Complex nonlinear effects of ink penetration into the textile (mainly capillary phenomenon) make this task very time consuming and may require significant number of expensive preprints. To overcome these difficulties CIM-mes Projekt (within the EU DIGITEX Project) developed a numerical model of ink penetration into the textile and encapsulated it in a form of toolbox for Functional Textile Architecture (FunTeA CAD). This paper shows capabilities of developed software on two virtual test cases: development of single sided hydrophobic textile and textile with anisotropic conductive pattern.
Armen Jaworski, Kees Heil, "Inkjet Printing on Textiles: Software Package for Textile Designers" in Proc. IS&T Int'l Conf. on Digital Printing Technologies and Digital Fabrication (NIP26), 2010, pp 676 - 679, https://doi.org/10.2352/ISSN.2169-4451.2010.26.1.art00078_2