Digital Printing on Large Area Glass Sheets

Ferdinand Trier & Ulrich Ranke, Munich University of Applied Sciences

Compared to conventional printing techniques, like screen printing, digital printing techniques show a new way for fast and cost-efficient printing on glass, especially for small piece numbers. Ink-Jet and Air-brush techniques are the most promising digital printing techniques. These two techniques have different properties, e.g. in speed, resolution, in the way, how colour mixing is done and in the availability of special effect paints.

A broad range between opaque to highly transparent printings can be achieved with recently developed printing inks, based on hybrid materials. Due to the transparency of the substrate glass, the degrees of freedom in designing the final appearance of the print are higher than with opaque printing.

Printing can be done on float glass as well as on tempered glass, the printed glass can also be subsequently laminated to safety glass.

Full-Text Article [160 KB]

The Authors