Comparing Inkjet with Other Printing Processes and Mainly Screen Printing

In very many applications, inkjet is competing with other printing processes. The properties of the printing inks are precisely adapted to the processes and vary largely. This chapter presents a comparison of the printing ink properties of the major printing processes. Low-viscosity inks are used in inkjet, medium viscosity inks in flexography and gravure, and highly viscous, pasty inks in offset or screen. Overall inkjet and screen printing are the closest and strongest competitors in many fields of applications such as specialty graphics, direct-to-shape, printed electronics, functional printing, and many more. Basically, inkjet has great advantages in the initial state of developments and testing in laboratory scale, and also it does not need printing form preparation. The chapter also presents a short overview of the most important technical features of screen printing.