Overview

Title: How to create aqueous pigment inks with soft hand feel and elevated fastness
Date: Wednesday 18 May
Duration: 1 hour

Summary

The textile printing world is changing. Higher demands towards increased sustainability, improved industrial hygiene, less production waste and a fully digital manufacturing process are clearly recognisable. For innovative businesses along the textile value chain – including brands, OEMs, ink manufacturers and raw material suppliers – digital printing is a logical next step while further offering a more granular control of production processes and a greater flexibility to react to changing demands.

Looking at state-of-the-art of printing technologies for textiles, screen printing as an analogue technology is still predominant in the industry and has largely reached its full potential. With proven and established processes come mature material solutions. Opposing to that, digital textile printing as a new and yet unproven disruptive technology requires advanced formulations and, more often than not, forces a revaluation of the suitability of standard raw materials employed.

A material of choice for printed textiles is polyurethane due to its high flexibility, soft hand feel and excellent light fastness. Can this proven and highly versatile material class be successfully employed to solve the challenges of digital textile printing? This question will be answered by highlighting a toolbox based on Covestro's INSQIN® technology. You will be shown how to create aqueous pigment inks with soft hand feel and elevated fastness by using a polyurethane and isocyanate raw materials in order to accelerate the shift from analogue to digital textile printing.