Various ink formulations for inkjet printing on nylon66 carpet are prepared by using CI Acid Red 57, Natrosol and sodium alginate thickeners, ethylene glycol, diethylene glycol, and isopropanol with auxiliaries. The inks are characterised for their rheological, wetting, and storage stability properties. They were jetted by using a Printos P16 drop-on-demand jet print-head onto the nylon66 carpet materials, and the printed images were characterised by using an Image Xpert system.
The inks that contained the synthetic thickeners at the optimum ratio provide good printing and imaging properties, such as optical density, drop size, and depth of penetration into the substrate at pH 4-5. The optimised ink formulation is found to have good storage stability. The study has focused on ink formulations based on CI Acid Red 57. Ink formulations based on other colorants could also be studied in order to assess the applicability of the ink formulation system found for other colorants. The ink formulations developed could find both uses in industrial scale printing and low cost ink formulations for printing of nylon66 carpets.
