CEDRIC: High performance products for ink jet printing

• Unité de recherche: PCRD EU
• Numéro de projet: 95.0161
• Titre du projet anglais: CEDRIC: High performance products for ink jet printing

Mots-clé (Anglais)

Ink jet printing; ink jet films; ink jet photopapers

Autre Numéro de projet (Anglais)

EU project number: BRPR-CT95-0023

Programme de recherche (Anglais)

EU-programme: 4. Frame Research Programme - 2.1 Industrial and materials technologies

Description succincte (Anglais)

See abstract

Partenaires et organisations internationales (Anglais)

Zeneca Colours (GB), Baltea (I), Akzo Chemicals (S), Arjo Wiggins (GB), Technical University of Helsinki (FIN)

Résumé des résultats (Abstract) (Anglais)

Ink Jet Printing is still a fast developing field which is moving rapidly from a rather limited print quality a few years ago towards a photorealistic and fast printing technology for a wide range of applications and substrates.
1996 in the first year of CEDRIC the main goal was the development of appropriate test methods for all relevant ink jet printing features. Besides image quality we have concentrated the work on handleability factors like drying times and storage properties. These tests have been checked in a comparative study of ink jet media on the most important small format ink jet printers from HP, Epson, Canon and Olivetti. The results of this extensive study have been analysed and combined with a literature and patent study. Detailed target setting have been the base for improved products for ink jet printing.
In the second year the main emphasis was on the development of first-level films and coated photopapers with improved ink jet properties. Besides the standard binder components which are commonly used in the industry for such coatings we have tested new classes of polymers and polymers which are neither standard nor designed for ink jet coatings. These experiments have been extended further towards multilayered structures with additional fine-tuning possibilities. As a result of these trial runs with several hundred of different recipes on our pilot coating machine and subsequent testing in our ink jet laboratory CELFA AG could concentrate on a few coating formulations out of this building kit.
In the third year of the project we optimised and upscaled a set of prototypes from the laboratory to technical and production scales. We developed coatings for a new transparency film, two photopapers, and a special coating for Zeneca prototype inks. These formulations for films and photopapers are well within the targets of the project. In detail the coating for film (low haze values and tackiness) offers fast drying times, good image quality, and universality on the most important desktop printers. Two types of multilayered coatings on photopaper base with mirror-glossy surface could be optimised for new ink jet photoprinters. One formulation offers advantages with pigmentary inks. The second photopaper has benefits with diluted photoinks for true photorealistic image quality. We could develop within the project besides these coatings for commercially available ink jet printers also a photopaper for a new experimental ink formulation.

Références bases de données (Anglais)

Swiss Database: Euro-DB of the
State Secretariat for Education and Research
Hallwylstrasse 4
CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland
Tel. [phone]
Swiss Project-Number: 95.0161