Ink Jet Printing

Ink Jet Printing: A non-impact printing process in which an intermittent or continuous stream of microscopic ink droplets are projected onto a substrate at high velocity from a pressurized system, the quality of the printer determines the speed and accuracy of the spray

While you are reading this page there is most likely an inkjet printer nearby. Since their introduction in the latter half of the 1980s, inkjet printers have grown in popularity and performance. An inkjet printer is any printer that places extremely small droplets of ink onto paper to create an image. If you ever look at a piece of paper that has come out of an inkjet printer, you know that the dots are extremely small (usually between 50 and 60 microns in diameter), so small that they are tinier than the diameter of a human hair (70 microns)! These dots are positioned very precisely, with resolutions of up to 1440x720 dots per inch (dpi). The dots can have different colors combined together to create photo-quality images, our printers use CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) to make up the colors of any print. Our Mimaki uses this style of printing, it works the same as a desktop model but 10 times bigger, with better ink and is much more accurate in the placement of inks.

How Long Has Ink Jet Printing Been Around?

Although inkjet printers only appeared on the consumer market in the late 1980s, they had been under development for more than twenty years by that time. In the mid-1970s, printer companies realized the potential of the technology that would make dot matrix printers obsolete. The challenge, however, was to come up with a way to create an affordable inkjet printer that would reliably create high-quality printouts. The quality of the printed page depends largely on the relationship between the ink, the print head, and the paper. Researchers had a hard time creating a controlled flow of ink from the print head onto the page, and preventing the print head from becoming clogged with dried ink. Once these challenges were met by Canon and Hewlett Packard in the late 1980s, liquid inkjet printers began to come on the market.

Continuous inkjet printers were developed by IBM, and use electrically-charged droplets to coat the page with ink very quickly but also waste a lot of ink. This technology never caught on with consumers, but is used today in industrial settings, for labeling cartons and addressing direct mail. The inkjet printer has come a long way since it became available almost twenty years ago: Hewlett Packard's DeskJet printer, which was among the first available to the public, was priced at $1,000 in 1988!

The Advantages of Ink Jet Printing

• Ink jet printing can be used to method for printing into fabric/textiles.
• Ink jet printed textiles are very durable and can be used for numerous outdoor applications.
• Full Color Process – no difference in cost between 1,2,3,4 color designs
• Can print larger print sizes than a litho press (or screen press)
• The proof is an actual output of your file on your fabric of choice
• Photographic quality image capability
• Very cost effective
• More elegant look and feel than vinyl or plastic
• Portability – can easily be rolled/shipped
• Lightweight
• Easy to fit stands, frames, & structures
• Many options to choose from

What We Offer

Mimaki: The Mimaki J series is also a wide format printer, printing at widths of 96" and a base resolution of 360x540 dpi. This is an excellent choice for products that will be viewed at close range. We recomend this printer for projects that require a large image at a high resolution.

Please note that most fabrics come in 60" widths, also color brightness will also vary due to fabric choice, most fabrics have a matte finish with vinyl having a more gloss finish.