Similarly to the art of screen printing, block printing originated in the Far East. India and China are the probable birthplace of block printing as, according to historians, their people used hand carved wood blocks for the production of ornaments on textiles. The principle of this method remains the same; the blocks are made by[…]

Penetration into the pile is important in carpet printing and there are two principles upon which flat bed machines have been constructed. The BDA machine, which is no longer widely used, employed an ingenious arrangement in which the reservoir of dye was trapped between the blades of a double squeegee passing over the screen, penetration[…]

In addition to the straightforward application of dye, textile printing offers the designer certain styles that can be used to obtain aesthetic effects. Discharge-printing, for example, can provide intricate printed patterns on a colored background (the ground color). The new pattern may be white or it may be a different color from the original fabric,[…]

The ability of disperse dyes to sublime on heating has led to a very different approach to textile printing. In this the design is first printed on paper using disperse dyes. The paper can then be inspected for faults; if any exist, that area of paper can be discarded to avoid wastage of fabric. The[…]

Fully-automatic flat screen printing is not continuous yet. Rotary-screen printing on the other hand is continuous. Rotating screens are used which are automatically fed (by means of pumps) with paste from inside. Driving the screens can be done at either side. The value of continuous rotary-screen printing first became apparent in the 1960s. The hollow[…]