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PolyJet technology allows printing complex multi-material composite configurations using Voxel digital designs' capability, thus allowing rapid prototyping of 3D printed structural parts. This paper aims to investigate the processing and mechanical characteristics of composite material configurations formed from soft and hard materials with different distributions and sizes via voxel digital print design.

Voxels are extruded representations of pixels and represent different material information similar to each pixel representing colors in digital images. Each geometric region of a digitally designed part represented by a voxel can be printed with a different material. Multi-material composite part configurations were formed and rapidly prototyped using a PolyJet printer Stratasys J750. A design of experiments composite part configuration of a soft material (Tango Plus) within a hard material matrix (Vero Black) was studied. Composite structures with different hard and soft material distributions, but at the same volume fractions of hard and soft materials, were rapidly prototyped via PolyJet printing through developed Voxel digital printing designs. The tensile behavior of these formed composite material configurations was studied.

Processing and mechanical behavior characteristics depend on materials in different regions and their distributions. Tensile characterization obtained the fracture energy, tensile strength, modulus and failure strength of different hard-soft composite systems. Mechanical properties and behavior of all different composite material systems are compared.

Tensile characteristics correlate to digital voxel designs that play a critical role in additive manufacturing, in addition to the formed material composition and distributions.

Results clearly indicate that multi-material composite systems with various tensile mechanical properties could be created using voxel printing by engineering the design of material distributions, and sizes. The important parameters such as inclusion size and distribution can easily be controlled within all slices via voxel digital designs in PolyJet printing. Therefore, engineers and designers can manipulate entire morphology and material at each voxel level, and different prototype morphologies can be created with the same voxel digital design. In addition, difficulties from AM process with voxel printing for such material designs is addressed, and effective digital solutions were used for successful prototypes. Some of these difficulties are extra support material or printing the part with different dimension than it designed to achieve the final part dimension fidelity. Present work addressed and resolved such issued and provided cyber based software solutions using CAD and voxel discretization. All these increase broad adaptability of PolyJet AM in industry for prototyping and end-use.

In the field of research on the application of digital printing to textile materials, there are still many research issues that arise from the very demanding interaction of digital printing technology and the complex, heterogeneous surface system of textile materials. This is precisely why the area of pre-treatment of textile materials is in need of research, and the purpose of this research was to establish the level of influence of physical and chemical activation of the textile surface with plasma and the possibility of improving the quality of the print and colour reproduction.

The paper deals with the possibility of applying argon and oxygen cold low-pressure plasma in the processing of cellulose knitted fabrics, with the aim of improving the quality of the print and colour reproduction in digital pigment inkjet printing. The selected raw material samples were 100% raw cotton and lyocell. After plasma treatment, the samples were printed by digital ink jet printing with water-based pigment printing ink. An analysis of the micromorphological structure of untreated and plasma-treated samples before and after printing was carried out, and a comparative analysis of the colour of the printed elements was carried out depending on the pre-treatment.

The conducted research showed a positive influence of plasma pre-treatment on the coverage of the fibre surface with pigments, the uniformity of pigment distribution along the fibre surface and the uniformity of the distribution of the polymeric binder layer. This has a positive effect on colour reproduction. Also, certain improvements in colourfastness to washing were obtained.

Considering the complexity of the topic, although exhaustive, this research is not sufficient in itself, but opens up new questions and gives ideas for further research that must be carried out in this area.

Also, this kind of research contributes to the possibility of adopting the idea of industrial plasma transformation, as an ecologically sustainable functionalisation of textiles, which has not yet been established.

This research is certainly a contribution to the establishment of acceptable textile pre-treatment methods in the field of digital printing, as one of the key quality factors in digital textile printing (DTP). Considering the still large number of obstacles and unanswered questions encountered in the field of digital printing on textiles, this kind of research is a strong contribution to the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of the complex interaction between printing ink and textile.

3D printing has been warmly welcomed by clothing enterprises for its customization capacity in recent years. However, such clothing enterprises have to face the digital transformation challenges brought by 3D printing. Since the business model is a competitive weapon for modern enterprises, there is a research gap between business model innovation and digital transformation challenges for 3D-printing garment enterprises. The aim of the paper is to innovate a new business model for 3D-printing garment enterprises in digital transformation.

A business model innovation canvas (BMIC), a new method for business model innovation, is used to innovate a new 3D-printing clothing enterprises business model in the context of digital transformation. The business model canvas (BMC) method is adopted to illustrate the new business model. The business model ecosystem is used to design the operating architecture and mechanism of the new business model.

First, 3D-printing clothing enterprises are facing digital transformation, and they urgently need to innovate new business models. Second, mass customization and distributed manufacturing are important ways of solving the business model problems faced by 3D-printing clothing enterprises in the process of digital transformation. Third, BMIC has proven to be an effective tool for business model innovation.

The new mass deep customization-distributed manufacturing (MDC-DM) business model is universal. As such, it can provide an important theoretical reference for other scholars to study similar problems. The digital transformation background is taken into account in the process of business model innovation. Therefore, this is the first hybrid research that has been focused on 3D printing, garment enterprises, digital transformation and business model innovation. On the other hand, business model innovation is a type of exploratory research, which means that the MDC-DM business model’s application effect cannot be immediately observed and requires further verification in the future.

The new business model MDC-DM is not only applicable to 3D-printing garment enterprises but also to some other enterprises that are either using or will use 3D printing to enhance their core competitiveness.

A new business model, MDC-DM, is created through BMIC, which allows 3D-printing garment enterprises to meet the challenges of digital transformation. In addition, the original canvas of the MDC-DM business model is designed using BMC. Moreover, the ecosystem of the MDC-DM business model is constructed, and its operation mechanisms are comprehensively designed.

This paper aims to prepare an associative thickener base on two polyacrylate-based copolymers, which can be used for digital printing of nylon carpet with enhanced performance.

An associative thickener was prepared by compounding two polyacrylate-based copolymers, cationic starch and polyacrylic acid; and mediated by polyethylene glycol and polyacrylamide crosslinker. The formulation of the associative thickener was optimized by using the orthogonal array testing strategy. The stability of the associative thickener was investigated by measuring effects of temperature, electrolytes, storage time and auxiliaries on viscosity. The associative thickener was compared with a commercial thickener by evaluating their performance in digital printing of nylon carpet.

The associative thickener provided same color strength and fastness in the printing of nylon carpet as the commercial one, but was more easily washed off for a better hand feeling of the printed carpet.

The prepared associative thickener can be applied for digital printing of nylon carpet.

The associative thickener can be facilely prepared from commercially available chemicals and suitable for digital printing of nylon carpet.

The PCB industry is quickly gearing up for the digital printing age. While photo imaging and screen‐printing have been commonly used as recognized and established techniques in the PCB industry, their high tooling costs and time‐consuming procedures are willingly exchanged by digital printing, following the establishment of this technology both in everyday office uses and in a variety of industrial applications. In the PCB industry, a number of companies have recently begun to offer various digital printing system configurations. This paper discusses the basic requirements of PCB ink‐jet printing systems. Possible solutions and basic system engineering considerations are presented, to show the optimal system configuration.

The purpose of this study is to identify the most influential factors affecting the printing properties and print quality of digitally printed silk fabrics in terms of colour strength and fixation percentage.

In this study, five factors (concentration of thickener, concentration of urea, concentration of alkali, pH of pretreatment liquor and steaming duration) were investigated using a blocked 2⁵⁻¹ fractional factorial experiment. The type of thickeners [polyacrylic acid and polyacrylamide (PAM)] were considered as a block.

Linear models were obtained and statistically tested using both analysis of variance and coefficient of determination (R²), and they were found to be accurate at 90 per cent confidence level. It was revealed that concentration of alkali, concentrations of urea and pH of the pretreatment liquor had an increasing effect on colour strength, whereas concentration of thickener and steaming duration showed decreasing effect on colour strength of digitally printed silk fabrics. Furthermore, concentration of alkali, concentrations of urea had increasing effect on dye fixation percentage, whereas steaming duration showed decreasing effect on dye fixation percentage of digitally printed silk fabrics. In addition, PAM thickener based pretreatment recipe exhibited better printing properties for the digitally printing of silk fabrics.

The main influences and significant two-factor interactions were discussed in detail to gain a better understanding of the printing properties of digitally printed silk fabrics. The findings of this study are useful for further optimisation of pre- and post-treatment processes for digital printing of silk fabrics.

Retailing thought and practice is premised on the assumption that consumers visit retailers to search for and acquire objects produced by manufacturers. In essence, we assume that the acts of consuming and producing are conducted by separate entities. This unspoken yet familiar premise shapes the questions retail scholars ask and the way retail practitioners think about their industry. Although this assumption accurately depicted retailing since the Industrial Revolution, its relevance is being challenged by a growing set of individuals who are equipped with new digital tools to engage in self-manufacturing. In this chapter, we examine self-manufacturing with a particular focus on the recent rise of desktop 3D printing. After discussing this new technology and reviewing the literature, we offer a conceptual classification of four distinct types of 3D printed objects and use this classification to inform a content analysis of over 400 of these objects. Based on this review and analysis, we discuss the implications of self-manufacturing for retailing thought and practice.

To review the concept of digital imaging for PCB manufacturing, with a specific focus on ink‐jet printing technologies.

This paper has been written to provide a review of digital imaging in the PCB industry. The application of ink‐jet printing in PCB manufacturing and the basic technology behind ink‐jet printing is described.

Ink‐jet printing in PCB manufacturing is a new technology, whose benefits and liabilities are still being determined. Although the concept of digital imaging fits a need in the industry for better control over registration, there are still many issues to be addressed for the technology to become widely adopted.

The value of the paper lies in educating the industry in the concepts of ink‐jet printing and the potential benefits it can deliver towards yield improvement and reduced costs in an ever‐more demanding and price sensitive market.

The purpose of this paper is to present the concepts of the digital collection of Taiwanese technological artifacts and reliable industrial technology, to proceed with the digitalization of the collected objects and their related literature, and to classify the pictorial, written, audio, and visual information of the database of the relief printing technology into groups with the principle focus on the National Science and Technology Museum collection.

The paper describes the application of the Metalogy software to develop a system that would satisfy the museum's managerial staff, researchers, and general viewers' demands on the same management and learning module.

The paper shows that a competitive digital collection web site has been implemented for the museum learning system.

The paper describes a very practical and useful learning system for the museum digital collection. This database can be developed as a system for the museum's technological artifacts resource, and thus become a precious digital asset of technological artifacts in Taiwan.