Patent ID: 8485657

Claim:
An ink jet printing process for sublimation printing of arbitrary textile fiber substrates, wherein the fiber materials are pretreated with an aqueous coating composition, enabling ink jet printing of natural and regenerated cellulosic fibers and blends thereof with synthetic fibers, by direct sublimation or sublimation transfer printing, applying to said fibers a textile coating or fabric pretreatment composition, wherein said textile coating or fabric pretreatment comprises: an aqueous dispersion of fluoropolymer particles and a non-fluoropolymer binder, wherein said aqueous fluoropolymer dispersion comprises particles of PTFE micropowder, said micropowder being either a granular-based PTFE micropowder or a coagulated dispersion-based fine powder PTFE micropowder, in which the term “micropowder,” as used herein, refers to very finely divided low molecular weight polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) powder, in which the fluoropolymer component composing the dispersed fluoropolymer particles is non-melt-processable PTFE or non-melt-processable modified PTFE, so-called because the PTFE homopolymer is modified by copolymerization with a copolymerizable ethylenically unsaturated comonomer in a very small amount, typically less than 1% by weight of the copolymer. These powders are either granular-based (suspension polymerized) or (fine powder) coagulated dispersion-based (emulsion or dispersion polymerized) powders. Their molecular weight ranges from a few ten thousand to a few hundred thousand compared to several million for the high molecular weight as-polymerized PTFE granular molding resins and CD-based fine powder extrusion resins.