The effects of floor tile ceramic glaze compositions on digital ink performance

Digital inks are the most expensive materials of ceramic tile production. Due to high cost of ceramic digital inks, nowadays it is very important to use fewer amounts of ink and getting the tonality required. The aim of the study are to investigate color performance of ceramic inks using inkjet printing method with adding different raw materials into floor tile mat ceramic glaze formulation and to understand what will be the effects of raw materials to digital color performance and studying to understand which oxides will effect on the color performance. In order to observe the changes on glazes and color performance, printings on ceramic tile are checked by the spectrophotometric tools. After these analyses, gamut comparisons of glaze formulations are analyzed with i1 profiler tools. It is well known that gamut volumes of glazes containing zirconia and wollostonite are wider than dolomite containing glazes and it was found that the visible and dense colors determined on these surfaces of glazes made of these raw materials including cited oxides. According to microstructure images the more free quartz particles which don't mixed in glazes causes decrease in color gamut volume an undesired formation of colors.