Printing Machine

Printing Machine 

in textiles, a machine designed to apply colored patterns to fabrics (seePRINTING). A distinction is made between roller, or cylinder, machines, equipped with engraved printing rollers made of copper, and machines for printing with screens; the former type is more widely used.

The principal working parts of a roller printer are a free-turning, hollow, iron cylinder, on which the fabric is placed for printing, and one or several (for multicolor printing) printing rollers positioned around the main cylinder. The surface of the cylinder has an elastic, springy surface consisting of ten to 16 layers of special fabric and a layer of kersey, which is protected from staining by a cover. The dye on the printing roller is applied by a rotating brush or roller, and the excess is removed with a steel plate called a doctor knife. In the printing process, the printing rollers are pressed against the continuously moving fabric; the speed of the fabric reaches 150 m/min.

In a screen printer, the dye flows through a fine-mesh screen or is forced through the screen with a doctor knife. The screen may be flat or in the form of a cylinder. The mesh is covered with a coat of lacquer in those areas that must be impermeable to the dye, corresponding to the blank areas in the pattern. The fabric speed is 3.5–20 m/min on machines with flat screens and 45–70 m/min (sometimes up to 100 m/min) on machines with cylindrical screens.

REFERENCE

Bel’tsov, V. M. Tekhnologicheskoe oborudovanie otdelochnykh fabrik tekstil’noipromyshlennosti. Leningrad, 1974.

M. N. KIRILLOVA