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Before you dive into a new wide-format printer, you must carefully consider what you want to accomplish and which ink set will help you get there. The cost of ink is a large consideration, but there are also the considerations of durability, adhesion, color brightness and coverage.

There are many varieties of inks available in the digital printing arena, from solvent and eco-solvent to latex, UV, solvent UV, aqueous (both dye and pigment) and dye sublimation. All inks have a few main components in common: a colorant (dye or pigment) and a carrier liquid. One of the defining qualities is the process where the color is adhered to the material or substrate.

Eco-Solvent

The liquid solution in eco-solvent ink comes from ether extracts taken from refined mineral oil. Don’t be misled into thinking this is an ecologically sound ink because of the title. Low- or light-solvent is perhaps a better name, and you will sometimes see those terms used to describe this ink.

Eco-solvent ink can print on many uncoated substrates and takes longer to dry out than solvent ink, making the maintenance of an eco-solvent printer less time consuming than a solvent machine. Once-a-week maintenance is usually sufficient to maintain a printer using this ink. It will typically take two to three years before the ink begins to fade, and it is waterproof and resistant to abrasion.

Solvent and eco-solvent inks can impact the integrity of vinyl and, depending on the ink coverage, can cause the vinyl to thin out and contract away from the adhesive’s release liner. Because of this, you see many wall graphic substrates switching to a polyester-based material to prevent the graphic from lifting away from the wall surface prematurely. It’s always best to test out any new materials to see how—or if—the inks will affect the material or its adhesion.

Eco-solvent inks are great for POS/POP, banner, vinyl, wall graphics, trade show graphics, window perforated, treated papers and some fabrics that have an inkjet receptive coating.

Solvent UV

Solvent UV inks use an interesting new chemistry that blends the best of both UV and solvents into one ink. The ink drop flattens on the material and doesn’t rise up from the surface like traditional UV inks. The curing is done with less-intense fluorescent tubes that are mounted in the printer, which can slightly limit the print speed because the inks need to be under the light longer. However, the durability, abrasion resistance and extreme flexibility of this ink make it one to seriously consider.

The ink is cured immediately and there is no degassing, so it can be laminated as soon as you are finished printing. Print head maintenance is similar to eco-solvent inks and they have very little odor. They are great for POS/POP, banners, vinyl and some fabrics.

Dye Sublimation

When using dye sublimation to print on textiles, it’s important to match the appropriate ink chemistry with the corresponding fabric type. The first type is acid dyes, which are used for silk, nylon and wool. Reactive dyes are used for cotton, rayon, linen and silk (the fabric must be pretreated prior to printing). Acid and reactive dyes are “steamed” to fix the dyes to the fabric. Reactive dyes take about half the time to steam as acid dyes. In both cases, the fabric must be washed after the steaming to remove any excess or non-fixed ink.

Disperse dyes are used for polyester and there are two forms of disperse inks. The first is low-energy disperse, which is typically printed onto a paper and then transferred to the polyester through the use of a heat press. The second is high-energy disperse, which is printed directly onto polyester and then cured through the use of an oven or a transfer press.

Pigment inks, though not fiber specific, are typically used for cotton and blends like poly/cotton. Pigment inks are fixed to the fabric through heat or UV curing, though the drawback to pigment inks is that they contain a resin that glues the pigments to the fiber. This resin-to-pigment ratio means that an ink with great durability has less color, and an ink with great color has less durability.

These inks can be printed onto thousands of fabrics, and some can be transferred from paper to rigid surfaces, such as mugs, caps, etc.

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