Effect of Chemical Pre-treatment on Screen Printed Fabric Performance Properties

Abstract

Printing is the process of transferring a specific pattern or design onto the surface of textile fabric. In the printing process, screen printing is one of the fundamental printing methods on textiles and is widely used worldwide. However, screen-printed fabrics have specific properties like fastness, water absorbency, and whiteness index that increase the end-use properties of the printed fabrics. There are several factors that affect the technical characteristics of printed fabrics. This research focuses on an experimental approach to ascertain and confirm the pre-treatment process as one of the most important factors in pigment dye screen-printed fabrics. The main raw material used in this research was 100% cotton fabric with a plain weave structure. The experimental method used in this research involved the pre-treatment (singeing, scouring, and bleaching) process with different recipes and four samples. Screen-printed fabric after printing was tested for its technical properties using standard test methods. The results of a one-way ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) were analysed using MINITAB and Microsoft (MS) Excel software. The results indicate superior fabric technical properties like color fastness to rubbing and washing, coupled with improved water absorbency and excellent whiteness index values of samples printed after bleaching with Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2). In this research, we conclude that printed fabric after bleaching with H2O2 has the best color fastness, and bleaching with NaOCl is the next one. However, printed fabric has a low fastness property after scouring and singeing.