1. Overview of global developmentThe history of digital printing can be traced back to 1884, when American C•H•Richard put water into a syringe and squeezed the needle end to fly out liquid drops. He was inspired by this. If the flying liquid is charged and the drop point is controlled by electricity, a portrait can be formed on paper, which is called fog ink printing. In 1972, Siemens introduced piezoelectric ink-jet technology on demand, which made the development of ink-jet technology enter a practical stage of controllable ink-jet technology on demand. In 1979, Canon introduced hot foaming on demand ink-jet technology, and in 1984, HP introduced similar hot foaming on demand ink-jet technology. Then came Epson's Micro Piezo technology, HP's Fullmap technology, Canon's Fine technology, and so on. In recent years, many manufacturers have introduced new ink-jet heads, such as Toshiba CA4 ink-jet head, Fuji Dimatix M series ink-jet head array, Panasonic ink-jet head array, etc., have been used in the field of ink-jet printing equipment.Related reports: Beijing Puhua Youce Information Consulting Co., Ltd. "2021-2026 Digital Printing Ink Industry Data In-depth Research Analysis and Strategic Planning Report"Digital printing is now recognized as the focus of the digital printing industry. In the North American market, which accounts for half of the world's total printing volume, its ink-jet printing revenue accounts for more than 70% of the annual revenue. It is estimated that the total scale of inkjet printing market will reach $90.3 billion by 2020. In the next 10 years, inkjet printing technology will be comparable to traditional printing technology in terms of printing quality, printing speed and production cost, leading the development trend of the printing industry in the future. With the rapid development of the printing market, the sales volume of printing ink also keeps growing. According to statistics, the global sales volume of printing ink in 2018 is about 182,900 tons, about 4.889 billion US dollars, and will continue to expand with a compound annual growth rate of 10.7% in the next five years.At present, water-based ink and solvent-based ink still occupy the dominant position in the printing ink market, but with the continuous development of the UV ink market, and environmental protection on the printing ink requirements continue to improve, UV ink is bound to be able to get rapid development, market share has been continuously improved.Figure 1 Main application fields of digital printing industry(1) Support from industrial policiesDigital printing technology and materials industry is a strategic emerging industry encouraged by the state and local government departments. At present, all kinds of industrial printing industry in China in such aspects as energy consumption and pollution has many problems, digital jet printing technology with artificial energy consumption, reduce pollution such as waste emissions green cleaner production technical advantage, conform to the state of the traditional printing industry energy conservation and emissions reduction, digital transformation, and accelerate the breakthrough in key technology, new material industry to expand its in a new generation of information technology, high-end equipment manufacturing industry, the scope of application of guidance. "" much starker choices-and graver consequences-in" national strategic emerging industry development planning ", the "printing" much starker choices-and graver consequences-in "development plan" and "industry key generic technology development guide (2017) and a series of national, local and industry policy, to the healthy development of the digital jet printing industry provides a powerful policy support and system guarantee, bring good opportunities for development.(2) Continuously expanding application fieldsAlong with the development of national economy, the further popularity of digital products and digital production mode, digital production methods would be important to the industry development direction, in addition to the traditional office printing applications, digital jet printing technology is more and more widely used in textile printing, packaging, publishing, advertising image, building decoration, electronic circuit, craft decoration, food, medical and aerospace and many other industries. As digital printing technology becomes more widely used, the demand for digital printing from more and more different types of users will increase dramatically. In the future, digital printing technology will continue to develop in the direction of energy conservation, environmental protection, functional improvement and adaptation to a broader field of digital printing, and the market size of digital printing will be further enhanced.4. Challenges(1) Fierce market competition and obvious disorderly competitionDue to the limitation of technology level and research and development capability, most of the domestic digital printing functional materials manufacturers are still in the low-end product market, and low-price competition, patent infringement and other disruptions to the market order occur from time to time. Some small manufacturers with low technology level and low capital investment have impacted the market with low cost brought by low quality and low environmental protection investment, resulting in disorderly competition in the industry market, which has formed a certain adverse impact on the healthy development of the domestic digital jet printing functional materials industry.(2) There is a certain gap with the development of foreign industriesDigital printing technology was introduced early in Europe, North America and other regions, and has been widely used in various industrial fields. It generally shows the characteristics of high technical level, wide application range and obvious brand advantages. Compared with the small and medium-sized enterprises in China's industry, its competitive advantage is more obvious. At the same time, digital printing technology based on digital printing ink, equipment, nozzle, motherboard system and substrate media and other key technologies, the key technologies need to maintain a high degree of adaptation relationship. At present, the core technology of digital nozzle products is still monopolized by a few manufacturers such as Europe, America and Japan, which restricts the overall development of domestic digital jet printing technology to a certain extent.5. Industry characteristics and development trendAt present, digital printing technology has been widely used in many industrial production and application fields, and has gradually become the leading technology in industrial printing production. At present, the development of the digital printing functional materials industry presents the following development trends:(1) Textile ink to a higher quality developmentThe fastest growing segment of the downstream digital printing industry is textile printing, and today's textile inks need to meet faster printing speeds, fuller color requirements, and higher cost performance requirements. Based on this, ink technology is more inclined to the high quality processing of color materials, such as the efficient grinding of disperse dyes, waterborne pigments paste grinding technology and other directions.(2) Water-based latex inks become the main direction of future developmentAt present, people pay more and more attention to environmental protection, and the same is true for printing ink. Its environmental protection has become one of the important indicators of whether it can enter the market. In the future, ink will be developed in a direction that is harmless to human body and friendly to the environment. The adhesive in latex ink solution can make the durability of water-based ink on non-coated paper substrate is almost the same as that achieved by using solvent or energy curing ink, but it is more environmentally friendly, which is the main direction of the future development of digital printing ink technology.(3) The target user group will be more detailed, and the ink and application scheme will be applied in more fieldsAs inkjet printing becomes more widely used, more users with different needs will join the inkjet user base. Ink-jet inks need to consider more functional requirements, and the screening, synthesis and application process of various functional materials becomes particularly important, which is also an important cornerstone for the future development of technology.(4) the adaptability of different materials will continue to enhance, energy curing ink will get considerable developmentDigital printing to achieve higher printing quality needs to be matched with the appropriate printing media, but a single type of ink is difficult to adapt to various types of media, especially in some non-absorbent coating media. This weakness greatly limits the scope of application of inkjet printing. Currently, energy curing inks such as UV-LED curing inks, EB curing inks and hybrid UV-curing inks have the ability to dry instantly, making them suitable for a wide range of printing media. Therefore, energy curing ink is a solution to enhance the adaptability of ink to different materials, and it is also one of the future development directions of ink.Before actually why although digital printing technology into the country for a long time but there is no well developed quickly, the important thing is the ink cost is too high, but the cost of high prices will get higher, so because the price is higher, but the technology is not very perfect, the market is not well developed, but now the digital printing technology is perfect, cost reduction and obvious advantages, the development of digital printing is faster and faster.As a digital printing manufacturer, I also believe that digital printing can be better and better.
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