Thermal Transfer Labels Guide

Ink is normally in a liquid form, however, there are several printing technology, which utilizes solid ink. The first method is sublimation transfer, which is a dry image printing process that uses dye crystals. When these dye crystals are subjected to heat and pressure, they are convert from a solid into a gas form without becoming a liquid. This technology differs from all other printing procedures in that the transferred image is adhered to the substrate molecules instead of on the print media’s surface, as is the case with inkjet printing.

The solid ink is melted, converted into a liquid, then sprayed or piezoelectrically driven onto the media. One major advantage of solid ink is that the ink does not have to dry. Instead, it solidifies almost immediately on the printing media surface. In addition, the solid ink does not dry out, nor does it require a wick as liquid ink does. Solid ink bounds to the paper surface producing colors that are more vivid and sharper images.

Solid Ink Printing

In 1995, Tektronix development indirect printing and revolutionized solid ink printing. Tektronix used an ink-jet printhead that spray-painted a complete image on a spinning drum. Once the image was applied to the drum surface, it was transferred from the drum onto paper. This concept made it possible to use a very simple paper path, with the paper being feed straight through the printer similar to that of an offset printing process. However, this indirect printing process places severe restrictions on the ink. The ink had to be hard at room temperature, have a low melt point and had to be able to easily jet through the tiny apertures of the printhead. In addition, the ink had to solidifies almost immediately on the drum surface and stay in place on a rapidly spinning drum. Lastly, the ink had to transfer from the drum to paper during the offset printing step. This led to the development of the solid inks used today.

The solid ink resembled that of crayon-like cartridges. The color quality of solid ink printing is stunning. In addition, its print speeds exceeded most equivalent-priced laser printer, due to the fact that it prints colors in a single pass instead of having to make four passes. The Tektronix-developed technology applies all four-color solid ink mirror images onto the drum in a single pass.

Comments are closed.