The impact of pre‐treatment paste on the effectiveness of digital textile printing on wool

Abstract Wool fibre printing techniques are implemented based on current fashion trends. Even while printing woollen materials is expensive, especially for small quantities, this has recently altered as a result of new technology advancements. The digital printing process used in this work to pattern wool‐fibre fabrics offers a great degree of design flexibility, limitless colour options, faster delivery, and lower energy and dye use. Reactive inks were employed in this study's digital textile printing procedure. Its goal was to investigate how the colour yield, sharpness and wet fastness of digitally printed wool fibre fabrics were affected by two distinct printing auxiliary agents—one based on aliphatic hydroxyl compounds (silicons, oils, waxes, hydrophobic particles composition‐defoamer) and the other on the composition of ethoxylates‐wetting agent added to the pre‐treatment pastes. The study concluded that adding a composition of ethoxylates based auxiliary agent to the pre‐treatment paste increased the colour yield. The percentage of increase varied depending on the colour of the pattern, but was at least 23% (from 23% up to 491%) and resulted in improved sharpness in digitally printed wool fabrics. This improvement also led to wash and rub fastness properties that were both high and commercially acceptable. The washing fastness values of all the printed wool fabrics studied were 5, with no staining observed. All rubbing fastness values were rated 4–5 on the grey scale or higher. There were no significant differences in fabric stiffness between the untreated woollen fabric and the pre‐treated and digitally printed samples.