Textile printing: Its power requirements and electric drive

Textile printing is the process of applying colored patterns and designs to all sorts of textile fabrics. The origin of the art dates back about 2000 years and credit for its discovery is given to both China and India. The present method of printing, known as cylinder or roller printing was invented and received its initial success about 1783–85. There are five methods used in textile printing, namely hand block printing, perritone or machine block printing, stenciling, flat surface printing from engraved copper plates, and cylinder printing from engraved copper rollers. Of the five, cylinder printing is the most modern and important. By this means almost any style of design on almost any fabric can be produced in from one to sixteen colors, and the output from such a machine compared to hand block printing is enormous. For example, the cylinder machine can readily print in 1½ minutes the same number of yards of cloth that would require 15 hours by the block method. The machine in its simplest form, viz.: a one-color machine, consists of a print roll or hollow copper cylinder upon which the pattern to be printed is engraved, a cast iron cylinder, the surface of which serves as a backing for the cloth to be printed, the furnisher or roll which carries the color to the print roll, the cleaning doctor which removes the surplus color from the print roll, and the color box which holds the color. The rolls are suitably mounted in. bearings so that the print roll surface is in contact with the cylinder, the cloth passing between the print roll and the cylinder. Color is supplied from the color box by the furnisher to the print roll which imparts it to the cloth. After printing the cloth is passed over dryers to dry the fresh color. The load on a printing machine consists of two parts, (a) constant load consisting of the dryers, guide roll and cloth conveyers, and (b) a variable load depending principally upon the class of goods to be printed, the length of and pressure used on the print rolls and the speed of the machine. The print roll pressure depends much upon the operator giving what in his estimation is the proper set for the rolls. This has been found to vary as much as 100 per cent for the same class of goods. A series of tests made on several machines each driven by a d-c. motor, in one plant printing cotton cloth 27 to 36 in. wide, gives the following results: Speed Variation: On machines ranging from four to nine colors a maximum machine speed range on any one machine was 4.82 to 1 with a maximum and minimum production for all machines of 84 to 1¼ yards per minute.