Swath Boundary Alignment for Textile Printing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Scanning-type printers face challenges in accurately controlling substrate advancement to prevent visible artefacts at swath boundaries, especially when printing on resilient materials like textiles, due to difficulties in aligning boundaries with the substrate's repetitive surface features.
Innovation Solution
The method involves determining the position of swath boundaries to align with the substrate's repetitive surface features, such as voids between yarns in textiles or low-contrast areas in wood, to minimize the visibility of defects, using optical scanners and electronic image processing to identify and adjust for surface features.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the substrate is advanced by the width of the swath to print adjacent swaths, then the printing process can be completed efficiently, but visible artefacts appear at the boundaries between adjacent swaths due to difficulty in controlling substrate advancement precision
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by making the boundary placement strategy dependent on the local characteristics of the substrate texture. Different regions of the substrate have different visual properties, and the boundary is placed in regions where defects are less visible. This allows the printing process to maintain both efficiency and acceptable quality by adapting to local substrate conditions rather than requiring uniform high precision across the entire substrate.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of boundary position from a fixed geometric location to a location determined by substrate texture characteristics. By using optical scanning and image processing to identify suitable regions for boundaries based on texture analysis, the system transforms the boundary placement problem from a precision control issue into a texture-based optimization problem, thereby resolving the contradiction between printing efficiency and boundary precision.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the substrate has resiliency as in textiles, then the material can be printed on with good flexibility, but it becomes difficult to control the advance of the substrate with sufficient accuracy
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by performing optical scanning and texture analysis of the substrate before the printing process begins. This pre-analysis allows the system to identify suitable regions for swath boundaries and plan the printing strategy in advance, compensating for the difficulties of controlling resilient substrates during printing. The boundary positions are determined based on pre-acquired texture information rather than relying on precision control during the actual printing process.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses feedback from optical scanning and image processing to determine boundary positions. By continuously monitoring the substrate texture and providing feedback to the boundary placement algorithm, the system can adapt to variations in substrate position and texture, thereby maintaining acceptable quality even when printing on resilient materials that are difficult to control with high precision.
3Ease of manufacture
If swath boundaries are placed arbitrarily, then the printing process is simple, but defects at boundaries are highly visible and degrade image quality
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by performing optical scanning and texture analysis of the substrate before determining boundary positions. This pre-analysis allows the system to identify suitable regions for boundaries based on texture characteristics, making the boundary placement process more sophisticated but preparing the information in advance to simplify the actual printing decision-making process.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the parameter of boundary position from an arbitrary geometric location to a location optimized based on texture analysis. By using image processing to evaluate different boundary positions and select those where defects are least visible, the system transforms the simple but problematic arbitrary placement into an optimized placement strategy that maintains ease of implementation while significantly reducing defect visibility.
Data Source
Figure 1~2
Figure 3
AI summary
A method of printing on a substrate (12) that has a texture in the form of repetitive surface features (28) extending in a predetermined direction, in which method a scanning-type printer is used for printing an image on the substrate in a plurality of successive and adjacent swaths (36, 38), characterized by a step of determining positions of a boundary (34) between the adjacent swaths such that the boundary (34) is aligned with said predetermined direction and has a predetermined spatial relationship to the repetitive surface features (28).