Textile Printing | Definition-Styles and Methods of Printing

Printing is another part of wet processing technology. Printing is carried out after pre-treatment of fabric or after dyeing of the fabric. Printing is carried out for producing attractive designs on fabric or other materials. The printing is described as localized dyeing i.e., dyes or pigments are applied locally or discontinuously to produce the various attractive designs on fabric. The main objectives of printing are the production of attractive designs with well defined boundaries made by the artistic arrangement of a motif or motifs in one or more colors. Printed fabrics are well protected from friction and washing if dyes or pigments are applied properly on fiber. A strong bonding is formed between dyes and fiber.



Steps in Textile Printing: Textile printing is carried out in different steps, such as:

• At first, fabrics should be pre-treated before printing.


• Printing paste must be prepared by using printing ingredients; printing performance depends on a well printing paste.


• Then, making an impression of the print paste on the fabric by using any of the printing methods, which is required.


• After that, drying is carried out on printed fabric.


• Steaming is carried out on printed fabric for fixing the printing paste on the fabric.


• At last, printing fabrics are neutralized by the after-treatment process.

Styles of Printing: There are three different styles of printing. Such as:

• Direct style of printing


• Discharge style of printing:

1. White discharge


2. Color discharge

• Resist style of printing:

1. White resist


2. Color resist

Methods of Printing: Printing is carried out with different instruments. Different methods are use to produce impression on fabric. Methods of printing differ on the demand of user. Also it depends on the materials type and type of purpose of end product use. The following methods can be applied for textile printing operation. They are as follows:

1. Block Printing


2. Burn-out Printing


3. Blotch Printing


4. Digital printing


5. Duplex Printing


6. Engraved Roller Printing


7. Electrostatic Printing


8. Flock Printing


9. Ink-jet Printing


10. Jet Spray Printing


11. Photo Printing


12. Rotary Screen Printing


13. Screen Printing (Flat Screen)


14. Stencil Printing


15. Spray Printing


16. Transfer Printing


17. Warp Printing


18. Special Methods (Tie dyeing and Batik Printing)

At the initial stage of printing, this printing work was done by hand but day by day this style is changing by utilizing different modern techniques. Now different types of critical printing is done very easily by the bless of modern science. Most of the printing machines are controlled by the computer. Graphics design is mostly use in printing process. Different types of textile machine manufacturing companies trying to improve the present techniques of printing methods.

Anyhow, printing process plays an important role in the civilized world. Multiple colors can be use in printing process. Sometimes printing properties show the identity of a nation. So, we should give great emphasis on printing process to produce different types of attractive design on textile materials.

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