The Term Technician Tool Kit is in my opinion such a broad term that could cover many aspects of Electronic Tools today. There are many different things to consider when making a purchase of this magnitude, especially when it deals with Electronic Tools that you will most likely be using daily as part of your new profession. I will not go into great depth on all of the different Technician Tool Kits that you could purchase, instead I will touch briefly on some of the more popular Electronic and Technician Tool Kits used today.

The first Tool Kit I purchased was one that I personally used when attending school for Electronics. It came with a good 60 watt Soldering Iron and a Desoldering Tool. As an apprentice I think I probably went through twice as many Desoldering Tools than any other tool in the Tool Kit. Of course this Educational Tool Kit also included a student calculator, a professional Analog Multimeter, and other basics like pliers and cutters. It was moderately priced and had all of the essentials for the Electronic Student.

Once you have graduated from Electronic training wherever that may be, you will have most likely chosen your favorite part of the Electronic Field in which you want to make a profession of. At this point you will most likely find that although the Electronic Tools you used while studying Electronics were quite adequate at the time, they will not be enough to continue with in your new founded career as an Electronic Technician.

If you will be working in the field of Computer Technology you may find it necessary to purchase specialized tools for repairing computers. While in other instances you may not only be servicing computers, but you may also be involved with networking as well. In that case you may also want your Technician Tool Kit to includes test equipment like Lan Testers, Stud Finders and specialized Crimping and Networking Tools.

Telecommunications has become the industry of this century. The Technician Tool Kit for computers is certainly not going to contain all of the tools necessary to work on Telecom Equipment. In my opinion there are two choices when it comes to purchasing a Telecom Tool Kit and the choice you make should be based on whether you are Installing Telecom Equipment, or if you are repairing Telecom Equipment.

If your talents take you in the direction of installing Telecom Equipment then you need to start with a professional quality Butt Set. This will be the heart of your Telecom Tool Kit, so money spent here on a better quality Butt Set up front will save you time and money in the future. Along with a good Butt Set you should consider a professional grade Tone Generator as well. Both the Tone Generator and the Butt Set will be the heart of your Telecom Tool Kit, so don’t skimp here, remember your tools reflect to your customer the quality of the work you do, long before you ever complete the job. Your Telecom Tool Kit should also include a good set of screwdrivers, pliers, cutters and punch down tool that will have interchangeable blades.

Now on the other hand if you are considering repairing Telecommunication Equipment then you should seriously consider purchasing what is called a Communications Tool Kit. It includes a Butt Set, Tone Generator and Punch Down Tool, but will also include tools like Nut drivers, Precision Screwdriver Sets, Tweezers, Flashlight, Adjustable Wrenches and Electricians Scissors.

Service Technicians also require a specialized Tool Kit. Generally you will find included in these types of Tool Kits a professional grade Digital Multimeter, Security Screwdriver Set, Professional Grade Soldering Iron, Mini Vacuum Cleaner, Voltage Test Screwdrivers, Inspection Mirror and Wire Stripper.

Now needless to say these Technician Tool Kits contain many other Electronic Tools in them, but there are far too many to list here in this article. I have tried in this article to recommend the most important tools found in each type of Technician Tool Kit to help give you a better understanding of the differences between each one and the importance to take the time to choose the Technician Tool Kit that will best fit into the field of Electronics your talents happen to take you.

There is a new form of advertising growing with great speed in the current industry and it’s called the Digital Signage. This advertising form is rocking the digital advertising world with its great features which are awesome just like its name implies. In digital signing, the electronic data is handled and controlled from one administrative console running the digital signage software and is sent across to others terminals without having to change their physical location. In other words, the content and/or message that are going to be displayed on the sign are shown on every electronic screen. Now this screen can show the message in a scrolling message board or plasma or LCD display as it really doesn’t matter which ever display format has been used. All the control is with the administrative console which is nothing but a form of a computer or a digital device which handles all this work remotely.

When digital signage was first launched, it was very expensive but as time has moved on, more and more people are becoming aware of this new advertising medium which brought the cost down in an affordable criteria leaving open air for rapid expansion into the advertising market. As a matter of fact, Wal-Mart was amongst the first to take full advantage of this great technology in promoting its products. Wal-Mart has made sure they have television sets located at specific and target locations which are displaying signs in a well controlled manner to get the public to buy more. The messages and videos are always changing to something that would catch the eye. After Wal-Mart, Best Buy was the next customer that used this technology to promote there products and services. Best Buy has also setup large television sets which are displaying random ads, sign and messages to attract more users and are expected to increase there indoor and outdoor display capacity by more than 300% by next five years.

No matter what the customer is demanding, if you can fulfill their needs or solve there problems then you are giving them a digital signage solution. With minimal training, anyone would be able to handle the administrative console computer and can program the signs, messages and videos per requirement. The results so far are very encouraging as digital signage is being used by schools, church signs and mostly in government offices where relaying of information is a common thing using the IP video. With the new hardware in market, audio and video programs can now be stored or downloaded to a computer and can be modified to be played at a later stage via the administrative console.

Many companies are still taking there own time in judging the performance of this new technology as there is incomplete information on the Return on interest or ROI factor which matters to most of them. This reluctant behavior is not good for the business but at the same time drives the technology company to dig more and generate the data that the customer would want to look at before making a purchase as everyone loves a good amount of ROI.

Although it’s not really a new technology, Digital TV will seem like a new technology to many people when it becomes the only transmission format for over the air TV programming starting in February of 2009. Digital TV basically takes advantage of computer technology to transmit television programming by converting the images and sounds into computer data before transmission. Upon arrival at its destination, that computer data is then reassembled into the picture and sound that become the TV programming that you can watch. While this may sound like a rather round about way of getting TV programming to its viewers it actually has a lot of advantages over the older analog transmission format. One of the first things that any new viewer of digital TV will most likely notice is that it provides a very clear picture. That’s due to the ability of the digital tuner that receives the transmission to clean interference out of the signal before converting the raw data into images and sounds. This ability to clean up the interference will improve the picture even of TV that’s transmitted over cable. That’s because some interference creeps into TV thats transmitted through buried cables.

Another major benefit of digital TV is that it comes with an on screen program guide that allows viewers to see what’s on each of the channels that they have access to. These interactive TV listings include descriptions of each program so that viewers can always know what’s on without flipping to a random channel and trying to guess what they’re watching.

Another, less visible, benefit of digital TV is that it can be compressed in order to take up less bandwidth. This means that more channels can be transmitted over the same cable or range of over the air frequencies. While this isn’t that helpful for normal over the air TV and satellite transmissions, it’s extremely useful for cable TV providers to expand the number of channels that they offer without replacing cables. It’s also good for anyone who wants to deliver HDTV programming- regardless of the transmission medium- because of its bandwidth hogging nature.

There are a couple of inconveniences that anyone who takes advantage of over the air TV will be subjected to when the switch is made in 2009. One of them is the fact that when it comes to reception, digital TV is very much an all or nothing type of deal. That is, with digital TV you either experience a crystal clear picture or you don’t get any picture at all. That’s a big difference between it and analog TV which will degrade, but still be watchable well after it starts getting fuzzy. This reality alone will probably cause a resurgence in the popularity of big roof top TV antennas. Another inconvenience is caused by the fact that there are a lot of TV sets out there that don’t have the digital tuners necessary to decode the digital TV signal. This can obviously be remedied by buying a new TV, but there will also be digital receiver boxes available that will convert the digital signals to analog format before sending them to the TV set.

In all, the higher quality picture and the increased available bandwidth that will result from the digital TV transition will be good things, but only time will tell how well people react to this switch.

Cestrian - UK Digital Printing Company

Textile printing is a method by which fabrics are printed in various colors, arts and designs. It is a very old art developed and created on fabrics in Egypt during 5000 B.C. Fabrics also found printed in Greek during 4th century. B.C, also it is noted that printing blocks were sourced from India in 5th century. B.C. During that time, France acknowledged as popular center of this type of cloth production and printing. Japan was popular for adding stencil work in wood by making blocks and further by pasting dies and prints it in fabrics.

In the Mid-15th Century, with the invention of printing press by John Gutenberg there was a drastic change seen in printing technology and textile printing. After practicing by William Caxton in England, there was a remarkable widespread seen in relief printing technology in 1476. In sixteen and seventeen century with the export of spices, India became major provider of printing fabrics and products, like calico, pajama, gingham, dungaree, chintz and khaki according to the requirement of European countries. Then by the efforts by Grant, Thomas Bell and many printers, with the invention of wood block (1760), copper block (1770) and copper roller (1797) printing technology in the eighteenth century, especially the trend of cotton printing spread, still it can be seen at the Toile de Jouy Museum.

The history of fabric printing in Dartford goes away with Augustus Applegath’s acceptance of a silk printing works in the town and it sustained until 1865 when James Keymer established a new fabric printing works on the banks of the River Darent. In 1907 Samuel Simon was used a fabric printing system in which the designs were shaped from stencils through screen printing machines. In 1940’s first photographic stencil was built up by Colin Sharp. After development of computers, the printing process and its developments geared up in their colors.

Development in last two decades

With the improvement in the printing technology, color inkjet printers played an important role in digital fabrics for the consumer market in the late 1980s. That time Canon and Hewlett-Packard became leaders in the printing technology. Canon’s Bubble Jet printers were received so acceptance in the market. Again latest technology geared up in their improvement with the existence of a large format color inkjet printer - the Iris printer in the 1990s, but that technology was not considered as ideal tool for the fabrics due to light sensitive color problem, rather it was accepted for paper printing.

Earlier, direct printing method used for fabric with the computer and the printing is made with the computer inks; it was the time where fabric was printed using only black images or text because of the availability of only laser printers and ribbon printers and there were no color printers. In 1999 Bubble Jet Set printing technology developed, which permits fabric to be treated, amalgamated to freezer paper with an iron and then operate through an ink jet printer.

The meaning of Digital fabric/Textile Printing

The digital fabrics printing technology is existed since last decade, it emerged after 1994. It is a skill that prints the designs on fabric, immediately from your computer, without extra efforts just like printing and designing a paper. Digital textile printing is a flexible tool and a key acceptable to the vision of mass customization. It permits the user to evade the screen making process, offering the chance for quick changes to color or design elements prior to printing.

Advantages of digital fabric printing over traditional printing technology

Generally, textile printing has been operated through transferring media, such as screens and rollers. Each transferring media is designed and allocated for a specific color. A block printing and engraved copper printing are operating through these methods. A number of woodblocks that are designed in block printing give a number of colors in design. Advantage of using this type of method is that you can have three dimensional effects due to its color separation and layers, and still today rotary screen printing method is used in designing of traditional floral patterns and toile designs. Mechanical or traditional fabric printing methods some times manipulate in both way, by design aesthetics and styles, while in the field of printed textile design with the latest digital fabric printing technology it enhanced the style and meaning of printed textile design. It is a fact that the new latest methods of digital printing on fabrics have exposed new horizons to the designers and manufacturers. Digital printing methods have facilitated manufactures to make a digital sampling and have advantages of change in designs before engraving. By adopting digital printing techniques you can re-adjust conventional printing design and can able to give new looks in design.

Today, many customers are demanding fabrics to be printed with various color combinations, styles, designs, traditional designs and looks, but to co-up with these customization demands there has been a limitation to attend the entire mass market with traditional printing technology. Digital printing profits over conventional printing it provide noteworthy benefits like quick turn-around, efficient set-up and speed, economical and great flexibility, takes less time, alteration possible etc. And in today’s customer oriented market the printing technology is not limited to wearing wears; but it bounds to its limits and reaches to the requirements of trade show graphics, picture of huge fabric posters of television and movie stars, advertising purposes, flags and banners and many mores.

Unlike any traditional textile printing technology, the main benefit of digital fabric printing is in its process color application with its latest printers, software applications. Photographic and tonal graphics shaped millions of colors with Photoshop and can be printed on fabric according to the color combination requirement. Wider color scope and finer printing quality are available with the latest development of inks, color management software. In the traditional process colors of CMYK, you can have various color combination with addition of extra preset colors like orange, blue, green, and also there is availability of various type of software with these complex color combination. These preset colors reduce importance of screens or rollers for printing, and there is no need of repeat the size and other combination with no limit with color combinations in designs.

From digital textile printing technology you can have latest innovative and creative deigns like concepts of shadow, shimmering, vibration, reflection, moire, optical, translucent, netting, blurring, layering, superimposing, etc., instead of making special efforts with traditional methods of printing. Today, the printing technology developed so tremendously and became so eco-friendly, user-friendly that, even designers can make its products without taking help from textile designers.

Digital Printing Advantages

. Design achieved with greater flexibility, without the limitation of on repeat size, colors, engineered designs and gets outstanding depiction of continuous tone (photographic) images

. The digital printing equipment not requires much infrastructure and it is comparatively available in less cost

. Drastically trim down time to market the products

. It also decrease the use of water, dyes & solutions hence acts as an environmentally friendly tool

. It decreases industrial waste and print loss, provides centralize manufacturing facility

. Mass customization requirements easily available in short time

. Availability of fast greater speed of operation, high resolution / drop Size & configuration with spot colors combination or color control without lack of standards

Types of digital fabric printing technologies

There are various types of digital printing technology available in market like thermal DOD Ink jet Piezoelectric DOD ink jet, airbrush/valve jet, electrostatic (sublimation & resin), thermal transfer, electro photography (Laser, LED), photographic development, continuous ink jet (CIJ) etc.

DOD Ink jet fabric printing method: DOD Ink jet printing method bring a drop of ink or dyes only when needed for printing that is why it is called drops on demand ( DOD ), i.e. it works on the principal “only when and where required in the design” . This system works as environment friendly, because of its “no paste, no waste “method, and the complete color reaches to the fabric.

Piezoelectric DOD ink jet fabric printing method: It uses electrostatic forces for arrangement and spraying of micro drops of inks or dyes in fabric printing. Here high voltages are applied to piezoelectric crystals for producing directional current. The advantage of using this methods are it formulation directional ink, where inks not heated , hence less expensive, printing heads works at its cycles per second and provides high resolution by applying small drop size of inks or dyes.

Electrostatic Sublimation Transfer Printing : Sublimation is a method whereby a solid dyes turns exactly into a gas without passing through a liquid state, can be transferred to a fabric (e.g. polyester) and re-solidify as a solid color again. Dye sublimation is a two-step process that needs additional equipment to the electrostatic printers for dye-sub. Also it requires a special paper for heating at the heat press; electrostatic printer. It is also called sublimation transfer printing. These inks or dyes can be printed onto paper from either a silkscreen process or from printers attached with ribbons with the sublimation inks. These papers then can transmit images onto fabrics.

Direct ink jet transfer method: The direct ink jet transfer method is direct transfer, or printing directly onto fabric with an inkjet printer. This process expensive and the fabrics require to be coated in order to effectively allow the inks or dyes.

Continuous ink jet fabric printing method: The ink is constantly pushed out of the ink channel by a pump by a nozzle attached with a PZT material and it generates an “ink-jet”. Using an electrical power on the PZT material, the nozzle shakes, breaches the ink jet into droplets of ink and used for printing fabrics. Continuous ink jet fabric printing method also available with its binary hertz operation and multi-deflection system.

Software application in digital fabric printing: For digital fabric printing Color management Systems (CMS, Calibration), Raster Image Processor (RIP), printer driver software, design lay out software (CAD), etc are widely used.

Development in printing equipment

At present Ichinose ImageProofer, Stork Amethyst, Dupont Artistri2020, Mimaki TX2-1600, Encad, NovaJet 880, Zimmer Chromotex, ColorSpan, FabriJet, Aprion Magic, Leggett and Platt Virtuetc, Imaje-Osiris, Reggiani DReAM, Robustelli Mona Lisa, Leggett & Platt UV-dye, Mimaki TX2 & TX 3 etc latest printers or equipment with their developed brand name or version are widely using for getting effective results.

Latest digital inks: Today most fabric printers or manufacturers uses reactive & acids in various colors, dispersed inks, finishing inks for light, color, pigments etc. Ink specialist such as Ciba Specialty Chemicals, DuPont, Dystar ( BASF), CHT, Lyson, Brookline, ECS and Kimberly Clark have developed digital form of conventional dyes such as reactive, acid, disperse and pigment. These inks permit printers to make prints on their specific type of fabrics.

According to Ray Work of DuPont, the worldwide market for textile chemicals is at $22 billion, of which around 36% is dyes and pigments. Finishing and coatings includes 38%. A foremost improved, according to Work, is that now almost every type of fabric can be digitally printed by ink jet, be grateful to progress in inks

For DuPont Artistri 2020 Printer DuPont Artistri 700 Series Ink is (acid dye ink chemistry) used for Nylon, Nylon/Lycra, Silk, Wool. For Polyester, Nylon, Nylon/Lycra processing disperse dye ink is used, for Cotton, Polyester, Cotton/Poly Blends, Viscose/Rayon Linen, Nylon*, Nylon/Lycra, Silk, Wool pigmented ink chemistry available. DuPont Solar Brite Ink is used especially for active wear, swimwear, intimate apparel, flags and accessories.

Digital textile printing technology in present market

For digital textile printing technology, there are three types of demands exists in market, which are sampling, strike-off, and mass customization.

Sampling: The sampling demand involves printing on paper and fabrics with an intimate concentration and compliance to the usual screen printing which is used for manufacturing. Strike-off: Strike-off is a product of sample for a single, salable item for markets such as luxury, entertainment, or special events.

Mass customization: Mass customization is the third main products area and it creates an immense deal of concentration by mass customers.

The future markets: Besides the above existed segment, the digital fabric printing technology will be booming with their batch production printing and low volume demand fabric printing. Its industry size is calculated: 300,000 Retailer “Doors” and 20,000+ Manufacturer “Doors”,

400 Companies Manufacture 80% of all apparel,

Apparel & Related Volume is $180B,

All Others’ Goods represent $36B.

Textile Printing Trends

The world wide trends: Decline in US print production, there seems growth of Asian print production and decreasing production run lengths, demand for greater design variety, demand for shorter production cycles and demand for reduced inventory risk.

Cotton is the most frequently printed material (48% of printing production), followed by cotton/polyester blends (19%), polyester (15%), and viscose (13%). From a worldwide viewpoint, other material (e.g. polyamide, polyacrylic, wool and silk) involve with a little part.

Prospecting Market

There are a range of new textile industry products you can print with digital printing, which covers wall covering, Info-banners, car covers, artworks, and flags and including museums, galleries, and exhibitors for multi disciplinary products, used in printing of education system or related products and there are many prospects for both direct and transfer digital printing e.g. for printing mouse pads ( new fabric surfaces and base materials), apparel prototyping for spot color, linking prototyping to production, and digitally-generated screens etc.

Digital textile production has been increasing at about 13% worldwide. The worldwide volume of digitally-printed textiles has been reaching about 44 million square meters by 2005. Duo to the high quality performance, in short time the availability of products, multidiscipline design, eco-friendly , cost- effective , etc advantages in digital textile printing technology, there exits a new market opportunities for this technology and it will be applicable to, backgrounds printing, scenes for theaters, film studios, photographers, music and sports events, road shows, parades, high profile catering, presidential campaigns, promotion organizers, advertising agencies, universities, churches, parties, for hanging signs, displays systems, packing, for sampling, for prototyping and new designs sampling, short run production, for interior designers to make curtains, upholstery, table cloth, bed ware etc.

The following suggestions have probably been considered or attempted by others. However, the potential lies in your ability to capitalize on your clients not having the time to complete the tasks for themselves. In the case of the Digital Photo Album business, there are thousands of people who are very familiar with converting paper photos to digital files but only a handful really have the time to engage the process. Hence, potential clients! Next, be sure to seek business guidance! This can be hard at times considering the amount of books and tapes sold on the subject. Just remember to look for information from people who have a similar business model as yours.

(1.) Start a business converting family paper photo Albums to digital photo albums. If you have a computer and a scanner you’re ready to start. If you use a mac, get iPhoto from Apple.com. I start with this application because iPhoto has the most complete process I’ve seen with a very low learning curve. Plus after you have finished scanning in all the photos and cleaning them up, for an extra charge to your client if you decide to do so, you can layout a hard cover photo book in iPhoto, and send it directly to Apple to be printed and mailed to you or the client for very little expense. If you’re on a PC consider Picasa 2 by Google, online at google.com for FREE. Did I say it was for FREE? I give a tutorial overview of Picasa on my site at theanthonyreport.com in the free tutorials section. It works similar to iPhoto but without the service of going directly to a book format. Still, the learning curve is low and the software is free. Both of the above require minimal computer system configurations ($500 e-machine or $1,200 iMac ) and scanner/printers run about $80.00

2.) Start a business trouble-shooting and upgrading computer systems. Now this may seem high tech but it’s really not. When on service calls I only have my knowledge of the PC and the Mac, an external hard drive to backup the clients documents, (even if they said they have done so), some software to run some tests and a screw driver. Clients are literally 2 doors to your left or right, if they have a computer. In fact the easiest clients in the world to get are computer clients. People ALWAYS need help with their computers. Trust me, once you announce just to your family and friends that you now fix and upgrade computers, you’ll be busy from that moment on. Don’t know how to charge? Just look at the price list the “Geek Squad” has. They charge $200 to setup a home network, excluding equipment! It really only takes 30 minutes, if that, to setup a home network, so under bid them. I would charge a $100 and be on my way to my next stop in 20 minutes.

3.) Setup a business configuring and loading iPods with music and video. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of people with iPods that don’t use them or haven’t added music to them since their friend first put a few tracks on there for them. People WILL pay you to setup their iPod. What tools do you need? The know how and transportation to the client. Or, you can have them drop off their music, movies and their iPod to your home and charge a package fee or a per hour fee. When it comes to movies I have had people give me a couple of DVD’s and asked if I could get them onto their iPod. All you need is some DVD ripping software and a compressor software then transfer the files onto the iPod.

Where do you get your customers in your area? Advertise in the local online newspaper, post a flyer at Starbucks, tell a friend, who’ll tell a friend. Trust me, word will spread. Once again, its not that people don’t have the technology to do these things, they just usually don’t want to take the time to get them done.

4.) Start a business creating forms for businesses. I know a guy who delivered a product to a client without an invoice detailing the exact amount of items to be delivered. An argument followed between the two regarding the amount. The person delivering the product wanted to keep the client so they just conceeded and brought the client more product at a loss to himself. A friend of mine let him know that all he needed was an invoice with his business logo and information on it with a carbon copy sheet attached. He had no idea as to how to do the above so he asked my friend to create the documents and get copies. My friend did so at a cost. There are a great many people who need all types of forms which can be downloaded from the internet and customized to fit the clients needs. What’s required? For this you don’t even need your own computer, use theirs! Google the type of form, download it, copy the text from it, bring it into MS Word and adjust! Or, depending on how complex it is, download a free trial version of photoshop and alter it there. Don’t know how to use photoshop, I have a great tutorial on my site that’ll get you up and running in no time.

5.) Create a Cell Phone Media business. On a flight to Atlanta I had a lady sitting next to me who decided to pitch me on a multilevel marketing product. I wasn’t interested in the product, but I was impressed that she had the promo video on her Treo cell phone. I asked her if everyone in the company had the same setup, she said no, her son had compressed the video to go on the phone. Now imagine your company that can take a corporate promo video and format it for the top PDA smartphones available on the market today! Most major corporations only use 1 type of phone but there are smaller companies with sales people that have the Treo, the Blackberry, the iPhone and other smartphones. Most phones can run either an Mpeg 4 (.mp4) video clip or a 3G compressed video clip. Download a free or very inexpensive video compressor like Movavi, (www.movavi.com) and you’re ready to go.

In part 2 to this article I’ll give you 5 more businesses and I give you some more marketing ideas as to the promotion of your businesses using digital technology. In the meantime I sugggest you stop by theanthonyreport.com and familiarize yourself with some other technologies that are available and how to implement them to accomplish everyday tasks in life.