Development of Printing Method to Produce High-glossy Images with UV Inkjet Printer

Abstract

While UV-curable inkjet printers have come into wide use, these printing systems have a few problems to be solved. We took notice that the printed images showed relatively low gloss. The decrease in gloss is known to be caused by the fact that UV-curable ink changes into solid before leveling off under irradiation of UV light. We have been trying to develop the new application of UV-curable inkjet printing to obtain high glossy images on the surface of various articles. We had already presented a prototype as one of such trials at ICJ2012, the annual conference of the Imaging Society of Japan in 2012. The process was called DVT which was the decompression transfer printing process with a UV-curable inkjet printer and a vacuum chamber. The DVT had some problems such as low image quality and troublesome process with manual operation. The first improved process which was called DVT-I was proposed at ICJ2013 held in Tokyo last June. However there still remained a few problems, so that we have continued our study and then developed an automated machine in this study. High image gloss has been obtained by excluding air bubbles during the decompression process. Thus we have been able to create products with high quality and glossy images on the surface of various articles.