A thermal treatment unit for a printer is mountable on a carriage that moves across a printing medium. The thermal treatment unit comprises an emitter element to emit radiation towards the printing medium to thermally treat the printing medium, wherein the thermal treatment unit varies a radiation power output of the emitter element in terms of a spatial position of the carriage along a width direction of the printing medium.

Provided are an image forming method including a step of preparing an ink which contains water and an organic solvent A having a vapor pressure of 0.20 kPa or less at 20° C. and in which a content of the organic solvent A is 10% by mass or greater, a step of preparing an aggregating liquid containing an aggregating agent, a step of preparing an overcoat liquid which contains a resin and an organic solvent B having a vapor pressure of 2.50 kPa or greater at 20° C. and in which a content of the organic solvent B is 10% by mass or greater, a step of applying the aggregating liquid onto an impermeable base material, a step of applying the ink to at least a portion of a region to which the aggregating liquid has been applied according to an ink jet method to form an image, and a step of applying the overcoat liquid onto the region to which the aggregating liquid has been applied in the impermeable base material, on which the image has been formed; and an ink set.

An inkjet printing device including: an ink storage unit configured to store an ink; an ejection head having a nozzle configured to eject the ink to a printing material; a heating unit configured to heat the printing material; and a washing unit configured to wash a nozzle-formed surface of the head with a washing liquid, wherein the ink is a clear ink including a resin, the device has a low gloss printing mode that is a printing mode for applying low gloss and a high gloss printing mode that is a printing mode for applying high gloss, and the inkjet printing device satisfies: T.sub.matte>T.sub.gloss where T.sub.matte (degrees Celsius) is a temperature of the heating unit when printing is performed with the low gloss printing mode, and T.sub.gloss (degrees Celsius) is a temperature of the heating unit when printing is performed with the high gloss printing mode.

An aqueous inkjet printing ink composition that is cured by the following radiation rays (1) includes: an acylphosphine oxide-based compound as a photopolymerization initiator of 3 to 10% by mass; a monofunctional water-soluble monomer of 30 to 50% by mass; a multifunctional water-soluble monomer of 10 to 30% by mass; and a pigment based on the whole ink composition, wherein the radiation rays (1) are radiation rays that contain a wavelength of 800 nm and a wavelength of 385 nm and have an irradiation intensity of 100 mW/cm.sup.2 or less at a wavelength of 385 nm. The aqueous inkjet printing ink composition can be cured by specific radiation rays and does not change color of the ink composition in an exemplary embodiment.

An ink set according to the present disclosure includes: a treatment liquid containing an aggregating agent; a deep ink composition; and a light ink composition, the ink compositions containing colorants, belonging to the same color system, and each being a water-based ink jet ink, the light ink composition contains an organic solvent which is a condensate of an alkanediol having 2 or 3 carbon atoms and which has two hydroxy groups, and the deep ink composition contains an organic solvent which is an alkanediol having 2 to 4 carbon atoms.

A recording method includes: a white ink attachment step of ejecting a white ink composition containing a white coloring material from a white ink jet head and attaching the white ink composition to a recording medium; a non-white ink attachment step of ejecting a non-white ink composition containing a non-white coloring material from a non-white ink jet head and attaching the non-white ink composition to the recording medium; and a primary drying step of heating the white ink composition and the non-white ink composition attached to the recording medium by a drying mechanism. In the white ink attachment step and the non-white ink attachment step, a layer containing the white ink composition and the non-white ink composition is formed by performing main scanning multiple times, in which the ink compositions are ejected and attached to the recording medium, and by attaching the white ink composition and the non-white ink composition to the same scanning region in the recording medium by the same main scanning, while moving a position of an ink jet head relative to the recording medium.

A treatment method according to an embodiment of the present disclosure includes: a first treatment agent adhesion step of ejecting a first treatment agent which contains a pigment, first resin particles, water, and a first water-soluble organic solvent from an ink jet head so as to be adhered to a cloth; and a second treatment agent adhesion step of spraying a second treatment agent which contains second resin particles, water, and a second water-soluble organic solvent from a nozzle front hole together with a heated gas to the cloth to which the first treatment agent is adhered so as to be adhered thereto, and the nozzle front hole has a temperature higher than a standard boiling point of the second water-soluble organic solvent by 50° C. or more.

An embodiment relates to an inkjet ink containing a mixed crystal pigment including two or more naphthol-based azo pigments, a binder resin (a-1) having an acid value of 1 to 80 mgKOH/g, a surfactant, and a water-soluble organic solvent, in which the amount of a water-soluble organic solvent having a boiling point of 240° C. or more at 1 atmosphere is 8% by mass or less relative to the total amount of the water-based inkjet ink.

Described is a process and system for direct printing of a decorative pattern onto an extruded PVC slat. The process includes providing a hot extruded PVC slat; directly contacting a surface of the hot extruded PVC slat with a direct printing cylinder as the slat is moved in a downstream direction, where the cylinder has a pattern with a cell structure that receives ink and rotates to directly apply the ink in the form of the pattern onto the surface of the hot extruded PVC slat. The process also includes controlling a temperature of the direct printing cylinder to inhibit drying of the ink while present on the direct printing cylinder.

An inkjet printing method for manufacturing decorative laminate panels ordered by a customer includes i) providing an inkjet printing device with a print job including one or more decorative patterns and an identification code assigned to the one or more decorative patterns; and ii) printing the one or more decorative patterns with one or more inkjet inks and applying the identification code on a substrate web, wherein the substrate web is a paper substrate and the one or more inkjet inks are aqueous pigmented inkjet inks are printed on the substrate web before impregnation with a thermosetting resin; or the one or more inkjet inks are UV curable inkjet inks and the substrate web is a thermoplastic substrate web based on a material selected from the group consisting of polyvinylchloride (PVC), polypropylene (PP), polyethylene (PE), polyethylene-terephthalate (PET) and thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU).