Digital Glaze Without Anti-Settling Agents
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Solution Overview
Problem
Digital inkjet printing techniques face challenges with thixotropic glazes, which exhibit high viscosity at low shear rates, leading to printing delays and defects, and require anti-settling agents that are not soluble in the liquid medium, causing stability issues and blockages in the printing process, especially when high grammage is needed.
Innovation Solution
A digital glaze composition without anti-settling agents, featuring a solid part made of ceramic raw materials and a liquid medium with specific solvents and additives, such as dispersants, binders, and rheological modifiers, to maintain low viscosity across shear rates and prevent sedimentation, ensuring stability and preventing blockages in the printing system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Stability of the object's composition
If anti-settling agents are used to prevent sedimentation in digital glaze, then sedimentation is reduced, but the glaze becomes thixotropic with high viscosity at low shear rates causing printing delays and defects
Solution Approach 1:
The invention removes anti-settling agents from the digital glaze formulation entirely. Instead of using traditional anti-settling agents like clays, bentonites, or colloidal oxides that cause thixotropy, the patent extracts this problematic component and replaces it with a carefully controlled particle size distribution system that achieves stability without sacrificing printability
Solution Approach 2:
The invention changes the critical parameters of the glaze system by defining specific particle size distribution ranges (D100 < 20 μm, D50 between 3-10 μm, D10 between 0.5-2 μm) and controlling the liquid medium composition (water content 10-50%, polar solvents 10-50%). These parameter changes enable the glaze to maintain low viscosity across all shear rates without anti-settling agents
2Quantity of substance
If high grammage is applied using digital inkjet printing, then coverage is improved, but traditional thixotropic glazes cause blockages in the printing system
Solution Approach 1:
The invention changes the rheological parameters of the glaze by controlling particle size distribution and liquid medium composition. The specific ranges (D100 < 20 μm, water 10-50%, polar solvents 10-50%) ensure the glaze maintains low viscosity across all shear rates, enabling high grammage application without blockages in the printing system
Solution Approach 2:
The invention creates a composite glaze system combining ceramic raw materials with specific particle size distributions and a tailored liquid medium containing water, polar solvents, and optional additives. This composite approach achieves both high grammage capability and printing system reliability without requiring anti-settling agents
3Ease of manufacture
If thixotropic glaze behavior is maintained for conventional application, then high viscosity is achieved for coverage, but digital printing requires low viscosity for proper flow through nozzles
Solution Approach 1:
The invention extracts the thixotropic behavior from the glaze formulation by removing anti-settling agents. The resulting glaze maintains low viscosity across all shear rates, making it compatible with digital printing while still achieving proper coverage through controlled particle size distribution and liquid medium composition
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of making the glaze thixotropic (viscosity increases at low shear rates) as in conventional applications, the invention inverts this behavior by ensuring viscosity remains low across all shear rates through specific particle size control and liquid medium formulation, enabling digital printing compatibility
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The digital glaze achieves stable, non-thixotropic behavior with viscosity remaining low across shear rates, preventing printing delays and blockages, and maintaining a low evaporation loss, enabling high grammage applications without anti-settling agents, thus ensuring high-quality prints.
Implementation Method 1
a liquid medium with specific solvents and additives, such as dispersants, binders, and rheological modifiers, to maintain low viscosity across shear rates
Implementation Method 2
maintaining a low evaporation loss, enabling high grammage applications without anti-settling agents, thus ensuring high-quality prints
Implementation Method 3
based on high resolution DOD technology (greater than 220 dpi) in which printheads are used which generate drops of dozens of picoliters at a frequency which, depending on the manufacturer of the printhead, oscillates between 5-30 KHz
Data Source
AI summary
The invention relates to a digital glaze for high grammage, without the use of anti-settling agents, referred to as digital glazes suitable for application using digital inkjet printing techniques that can be used to apply high grammage, maintaining the same aesthetic and technical characteristics obtained with traditional glazes and non-digital application techniques. No anti-settling agents are used in the composition so as to prevent the digital glaze of the invention from being thixotropic and, consequently, creating problems in the inkjet printing process, since anti-settling agents are solid and not soluble in the liquid medium that also forms part of the digital glaze. The composition comprises: at least one medium that is liquid at ambient temperature, formed by a mixture of water and polar solvents and/or solvents of medium to low polarity, having a percentage by weight of between 20 and 70 % of the total weight of the digital glaze; and at least one mixture of ceramic raw materials and/or frits as a glaze-forming material, having a percentage by weight of between 30 and 80 % of the total weight of the digital glaze.