Drop-on-demand printing of ceramic pigments for decoration

The market of value priced dinnerware and wall tiles strongly tends to a flexible production of small batches and even single items, for example to replace valuable dishes which are out of sale or to make customised photo tiles. State of the art for the decoration with ceramic pigments is screen printing but this technique does not allow a small batch production due to the high costs of the screens. Alternative digital printing technologies are inkjet and laser printing. Ceramic pigments are quite large and abrasive particles (2-5mm) and since the colour effect is much weaker compared to organic pigments a higher concentration of the pigments on the ceramic carrier is required. This presentation focuses on the physics and chemistry of inkjet printing of ceramic pigments, i.e. the challenge to get a stable printing process which results in bright colours after the baking step. A comparison of both digital printing technologies is given.