What is Textile Printing?
Textile printing is an important method in textile industry used to apply colors, patterns, and designs onto fabric surfaces. Textile printing is where creativity meets cloth—transforming blank fabric into vibrant patterns, storytelling designs, and wearable art. It not only enhances the appearance of textiles but also adds value and uniqueness to finished products like clothing, home décor, and accessories. In this article I will explain various types of textile printing techniques.
Popular Textile Printing Techniques
Direct Printing:
The dyes, thickeners, mordants and/or fixing agents are combined and printed directly onto the fabric. This lowers the production costs and makes the process more efficient.
The following printing techniques require some form of fixing agent to hold them fast into the fabric, which may be a chemical or heat:
Hand Block Printing:
This is a very expensive technique because, often, the blocks are hand carved from wood and then hand printed. Usually, fabric that uses this process is produced in small quantities (batch production) at approximately sixty to one hundred meters per week.
Engraved Roller Printing:
Fine designs can be engraved onto a copper roller (copper is a soft metal) and electroplated with chrome for durability. One roller per color is required, up to a maximum of fourteen colors, and they are engraved to create the pattern. A print paste is applied to the roller, a blade scrapes off the excess paste and the fabric is fed underneath the roller. This is a very expensive method of printing fabric; often, the fabric is distorted, which causes misalignment of the design, and the rollers cannot be reused if the design changes. Approximately fifty to one hundred meters per minute can be produced, but only 5% of the world market uses such techniques.
Above diagrams showing an engraved roller set up for single and multi-colours: a felt blanket next to the conveyor belt absorbs the pressure of the rollers and the grey back cloth absorbs the excess dye that has penetrated the fabric printed from the rollers. The bleached fabric has the design printed onto it.
Flat Screen Printing:
The manual process used mainly for sample runs or handicraft images and is, therefore, a time consuming process. Automatic and semi-continuous process aligns the screens and use one screen per color with aspects of the design on each one. The screens rise and drop as the fabric passes underneath them, which allows them to print the images at a rate of five to fifteen meters per minute.
Diagram of a Manual, Single Flat Screen
- Ink
- Squeegee
- Image on the screen
- Photo-Emulsion
- Screen
- Printed Image
Rotary Screen Printing:
Similar to flat screen as there is one screen per color with aspects of the design on it but as it is a cylindrical screen it will take up less space than flat screen printing. This process is continuously monitored by CAD/CAM, and the roll screen rises and drops accordingly. It produces thirty to eighty meters per minute.
Inside each rotary screen, the dye comes out of the color feed pipe (CFP). The amount that comes out is controlled by the color control probe (CCP), and it is forced through the mesh of the rotary screen by the stationary squeegee blade (SSB).
Continuous Transfer Print:
This process uses paper with a printed design that is transferred via heat and pressures to fabric e.g. disperse dyes on paper transferred onto polyester, at a rate of thirty meters per minute. It is also known as thermo, dry and sublimation printing.
Discharge Printing:
The fabric or product is dyed, and then a paste of the print design is placed on top of it (perhaps as a screen print) before it is baked. The paste has a chemical in it, usually some form of bleach, which, when heated, removes the color of the background fabric to reveal the true color in the print. It is usually used for small-pattern motifs, e.g. prints on T-shirts, because it is a time-consuming, costly process; manufacturers must ensure the chemical destroys the dye, not the fiber content of the fabric.
Digital or Inkjet Printing:
This process uses computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM). The design is drawn using software on a computer, or it is scanned in and edited into colorways before being printed directly onto garments or fabrics. There are numerous benefits to using this method in mass production:
- Eco-friendly (no waste or disposal issues)
- Very efficient production
- Wide color range
- No screens required
- Prints on demand
- Responds to quick changes in design
- Produces small quantities at a reasonable cost
- Prints without restrictions over long lengths
- High machine utilization.
The water-based printer inks are known as disperse direct inks. Dye-sublimation is used for polyester, polyamide and silk use acid inks, whereas reactive inks are used for cellulose fabrics, including cotton, linen, silk and viscose.
Conclusion
Textile printing techniques bring life to plain fabrics, offering endless possibilities in fashion, home décor, and industrial textiles. Each textile printing technique offers distinct advantages, from the handcrafted charm of block printing to the precision and speed of digital methods. Understanding these techniques enables designers and manufacturers to select the best process for their creative and commercial needs.