Digital Printing has come to be synonymous with infinite design possibilities, speed and sizeable market proportions with most estimates pegging the current global market size at US $ 7.5 billion and growth at over 30 per cent in the next four years. As the market and design possibilities gallop, technology providers have catered to the needs of the hour with incremental improvements and innovations. At the upcoming ITMA 2015, to be held in Milan, Italy, crème de la crème of the digital printing world will congregate. As digital printing enjoys the centre stage, the ITMA weekend will feature ‘The Next Stage: Latest Advances in Production Inkjet Printing’, a WTiN Digital Textile Conference that will deliver a comprehensive presentation on the most important new developments in a convenient 1-day format. Team StitchWorld reviews the line-up of exhibits for digital printing…
The challenges for digital printing to come of age have been immense. Despite the promising and infallible advantages like faster turnaround times, virtually no limits in terms of design and colour reproduction, and eco friendly nature to name a few, the technology has had to combat criticism for its compromise over resolution for speed and vice-versa, clogged nozzles, faster heads vs faster machines debate, etc. Introduction of single pass machines has enabled digital printing to operate at speeds faster than rotary printers while minimizing instances of imperfect registration.
A look at the exhibits to watch out for…
Konica Minolta’s latest machines aim for hi-speed, hi-resolution prints
Konica Minolta Inc. (Konica Minolta) launched this September the Nassenger SP-1, a high-productivity, high-resolution inkjet textile printer that employs a single pass system, in response to the increasing use of digital printing in the textile printing industry. Nassenger SP-1 employs a single pass system that prints on a fabric (medium) as the fabric is fed under a fixed print unit. This model boasts a much higher print speed than a scan-type printer that prints by moving a printhead carriage back and forth, and thus can meet the needs of the market for a printer with the speed of a screen printing machine. A high-precision ink ejection control capability of this model enables high-resolution images to be reproduced at an ultra-high speed. The model incorporates newly developed printheads that can eject ink droplets smaller than the droplets ejected by conventional printers and Konica Minolta’s proprietary ink ejection control technology, which enables the ink droplet size to be adjusted (large, medium, and small), thus achieving higher-quality reproduction of fine patterns and colour gradients.
SPGPrints increases ink firing distance while eliminating mist
SPGPrints’ Pike® is based on a full-width array of Fujifilm Samba’s printheads, especially modified in a joint project for optimum performance in textile printing. The heads are incorporated in a userfriendly printbar technology that ensures accuracy, called ‘Archer®’. The head plates in the Archer® array are 4mm away from the surface of the substrate, compared with the typical 1.5mm of other printheads, thus greatly reducing the risk of ‘head strike’, which can damage machine components. SPGPrints has also developed Pike® Reactive inks, with a formula that eliminates the mist problem, which might have arisen with this greater firing distance. The first Pike® printer is a 6-colour machine in which each colour is represented by an Archer® printbar containing 43 printheads, giving a printing width of 1,850 mm. The printbar has a native resolution of 1200 dpi x 1200 dpi, variable drop sizes from 2 to 10 picolitre (pl) and a jetting frequency of 32 kHz, which together deliver typical productivity of 40 linear metres per minute, with a maximum of around 75 linear metre per minute.
MS Italy courts single pass
With a printing width of up to 320 cm, MS Italy has introduced LaRIO. The printer comes with a variable drop size ranging from 4 pl to 72 pl, high resolution speed of 35 linear metres per minute and an overall maximum speed of 75 inear metres per minute. The highest resolution furnished by the printer rests at 600 dpi x 600 dpi. LaRIO has an open ink system, open software system, embedded remote diagnostic and embedded web server for cost report.
Zimmer to introduce new digital printers
Zimmer Austria will launch two new digital textile printers. Colaris Infiniti is an ‘off-the-shelf’ 1.8 metre long printer, which can hold up to 8 colours and 32 SPT 1024GS printheads in total with drop sizes ranging from 7 pl to 21 pl. The speed ranges from 520 sq. m. per hour at 360 dpi x 360 dpi at 1 pass to 170 sq. m. at 360 dpi x 1080 dpi at 3 passes, using 4 heads per colour. Colaris³, available in width ranging from 1.8 to 5 metre, is the 3rd generation of the high-performance digital textile printer using up to 64 FUJIFILM Dimatix Starfire heads with ink circulation system. Printheads are available in three different models with drop sizes varying from 10 pl to 250 pl and a native resolution of 400 dpi x 400 dpi. The maximum speed of the Colaris3 will be 1.67 sq. m./hour and will cover resolutions up to 1600 dpi.
Kornit Digital’s Vulcan for directto-garment include medium-to-long print runs
Kornit’s new Vulcan is a digital platform that rivals screen printing for mid-to-long prints runs, due to its extraordinary speed and ink efficiency. Compared to the company’s current systems, Vulcan users can reduce per print cost by up to 40%. Kornit’s new direct-to-garment flagship is capable of producing up to 250 high-quality garments per hour, with dark and light garments printed at the same speed. This marks a significant increase of productivity at more than double the effective throughput of previous Kornit systems. The Vulcan will produce excellent photorealistic quality, featuring 60 new-generation printheads with an advanced recirculating ink system in a six-colour-plus-white configuration. The system caters to multiple print sizes and configurations with a maximum print size of 70 cm x 100 cm.
As the market and design possibilities gallop, technology providers have catered to the needs of the hour with incremental improvements and innovations. For example, introduction of single pass machines has enabled digital printing to operate at speeds faster than rotary printers while minimizing instances of imperfect registration.
Mimaki to introduce direct-to-textile inkjet printer
Mimaki is all set to introduce its latest direct-to-textile inkjet printer, TX300P-1800 at ITMA this year. The 1.8 metre-long roll-to-roll eight-colour inkjet printer features a new printhead that ejects ink droplets at high speed to ensure accurate ink placement with a high head gap, which makes it suitable for printing high-quality images on all types of fabrics, including thicker and textured materials. It is capable of printing up to 68 sq. m./hour and has a resolution of 1080 dpi with drop sizes ranging from 6 pI to 24 pI. It is compatible for use with sublimation dye, pigment dye, reactive dye, disperse dye, and acid dye inks. It is assisted by automatic detection and cleaning of clogged nozzles.
Durst Kappa digital printers designed for colour conformity across complete print area
Kappa 180 V2 is the perfect production machine for industrial digital printing in the apparel industry, but is also used for furniture and fabric manufacture. The Kappa 180, with a maximum printing width of 195 cm, produces in standard mode (or high speed mode) with a print quality of 1000 dpi x 600 dpi and a production speed of 580 sq. m./ hour. The printer can be run on a high quality mode as well where it clocks printing speed of up to 275 sq. m./hour and a resolution of 1000 dpi x 1200 dpi. For the Kappa 180 V2, the Durst Quadro printhead technology has been advanced to meet the different requirements of the textile materials with ‘QuadroZ V2’. The modified Durst QuadroZ V2 printhead technology arranges the colours on the 8-channel printheads symmetrically (mirrored). In this way, precise colour application is ensured for bi-directional printing. Depending on the print direction, the colour channel is always located at correct application position, which optimizes the reproduction of intricate designs with gradients or fine patterns. Thus colour conformity is achieved over the entire printing width without reducing the production speed. The QuadroZ V2 printhead technology enables printing on textile materials using water-based reactive-, acid- and dispersion-inks.
