Transfer Printing Essay Research Paper Transfer PrintingMan

Transfer Printing Essay, Research Paper Transfer Printing Man s urge to decorate his clothing and fabrics of his environment, by means of printing, dates back to the earliest of times. Over the ages and even more now it is desirable to have designs on our fabrics. There are many ways of getting these designs onto our clothing and fabric. One way of doing this is printing on fabric. Printing is the localized coloration of textiles(Mock). It is characterized by use of delivery systems that apply precise amounts of colorant to locations on the fabric. There are several printing methods such as roller printing, screen printing, ink jet printing, and transfer printing. This paper will focus on the method of transfer printing. One of the latest and most interesting developments in

the field of textile printing is the process known as transfer, or Sublistatic , printing. Transfer printing is a term used to describe any process by which a colored design may be transferred without image distortion from a print on paper to a textile or polymeric material. It is simply a heat transfer method of patterning synthetic fabrics. The pattern is first printed on to a paper web. This is done with special inks that contain dispersed dyestuffs which sublime at a temperature between 160 and 220 degrees Fahrenheit. Sublimation is the process in chemistry whereby a solid is converted into a vapor by heat and back again into a solid on cooling(Storey). At this temperature the dyestuffs have little affinity for the paper carrier, but a high affinity for the fabric to be

printed and thus the image is transferred from the paper to the fabric. There are many advantages of transfer printing. The majority of polyester, acrylic, acetate and triacetate fibers are suitable for the transfer process. Fabrics woven or knitted with up to thirty percent natural fiber mixtures also react well to transfer printing. It is also easy to print continuous fabric, cut pieces of fully fashioned garments, or even the made-up garments themselves, with a rotary or flat press calendering machine. More advantages include flexibility, quality, and the fact that bonded fabric can be printed after the bonding has taken place. To run a transfer print order entails the setting up of a calender, which is a quick operation. All that has to be done is turning the dial to the

correct temperature and proper speed. The paper and fabric is put through the calender and printing begins. All the steaming and washing necessary for wet printing produces fabric shrinkage of only 8-12 percent. Seconds created by misprints, smearing, or other problems run 5-8 percent(Printing guide). Waste through checking sampling and handling runs less than 1%(Printing guide). These numbers are all significantly low. Quality is only natural to transfer printing. Paper is easier to print than fabric, and gravure printing gives better results than screen printing. One serious drawback to the printing of this type of cloth used to be the amount of distortion that resulted. Now, stripes, checks, and other geometric patterns are all easily attainable by the transfer process.

Obviously transfer printing did not mysteriously appear out of the blue without any forerunners. Transfer prints on textiles have been produced in various forms for atleast a century. Development In 1953, an Italian process, The Star transfer printing process was introduced by Stampa Tessuti Artistici of Milan(Miles). This was a direct and true forerunner of transfer printing as we know it today. The paper was all photogravure printed and mainly transferred onto natural silk and extremely fine quality cotton. The transfer paper was at first in cut sheets. It was passed between pressure rollers at varying temperatures. The big disadvantage of the Star method was that a normal fixing process was also necessary after transference, and this made it very expensive and non-competitive.