Gaurav Jinturkar

Inkjet printing itself is a profitable profession, only thing is that the requirement is quality in finished prints than quantity. Many of the service provider selects the printing business according to end user. Let’s consider a photograph printing, here you can use dye ink, pigment ink. The question is what to be used if you are involved in this type of profession. All type of inks have advantage and disadvantages. Dye and pigment ink are used for photography, document printing etc., but the area is predefined on the basis of ink chemistry. Dye based ink are made from natural dyes while pigments dyes are made from organic dyes. The molecular size is small for dye inks as compared to large molecular size of pigments. Fade Resistance, printing with dye inks become fade when directly exposed to sunlight, ozone, UV light as compared to pigment inks. Improved ink chemistry provides the better solution to use dye inks and becoming more user friendly. Vibrancy in colors, printed image colour in dye inks are more vibrant and sharp than pigment as pigments are more fade resistance than dye. Generally the life of the printed image with dye ink is less at the same time image with pigments are long lasting. Actually life span is depends on to the media use, because low GSM paper or poor coating on photo paper allow ink to go inside the paper and dye ink penetrates the paper results more absorption of ink by the papers, similarly for pigment ink this phenomenon is negligible as pigments are rests on the upper layer of the coatings and very less amount of pigments goes inside the paper. Hence you can say that dye inks are suitable for the short duration of printed document, indoor applications, colour sharpness, vibrancy is more etc., and for long lasting image, comparatively dull colour than dye ink you can choose the pigment ink. Dye inks gives poor performance in contact with water, it gets washed off as the molecules are not tightly bound and easily dissolved in water. So special coating would require on paper to hold the molecules while for pigments they tightly contacted with media and very less ink will washed off. Some service provider gives special covered wrappings printed image so that the printing with dye inks needs time to become dry on the paper, while for pigment ink printing time will be less. Any desktop printer are compatible with dye and pigment inks, but Epson is most acceptable for photo printing areas, whereas for other application like outdoor applications, CAD/CAM drawings, Epson pigment ink would preferred as it is long lasting. Another area of interest is textile industry including fashion wears, home mattresses in which pigment ink is used on wide applications, the reason behind this is excellent light resistance and long lasting colors. The pigment ink passed through the thermal fixation process so that the ink colours forms very tight bonding and become part of fabrics. Meanwhile the fabrics should be pre-treated before undergone to the printing process, the pre-treat is solution which bonds the ink molecules in fixations process. If you compare dye and pigment ink on basis of application, dye ink have least application than pigment inks.