Adding value to textile products, printing has found expression through many different techniques from hand-blocks to technology-driven digital printing and rotary printing services, which are the most popular owing to their individual imperative characteristics. With both the printing segments improving day by day and working towards controlling the bottlenecks such as ink performance, print speed and quality, substrate handling, wash and wear fastness and effluent discharges, digital and rotary screen printing techniques are reciprocating to the growing demand and prevalence in the best possible ways…
Digital and rotary printing services, owing to their distinctive application areas tend to target different market niches. While digital printing being expensive, but thriving on clarity and sharpness of image, aims mostly at boutique buyers and designers, rotary printing on the other hand is the preferred printing process for exporters and job-workers with bulk orders. “As digital and rotary both have their specific applications, the business opportunities are growing in both the segments. Digital printing is able to create abstract, submerged, mirrored, psychedelic and photographic prints leading to its boom in high-fashion segment, whereas the ability to meet bulk demands and generate discharge, burnout and foil prints make rotary a favourite in the mass market,” avers Mahavir Kankariya, Director, Kankariya Textile Industries who provides printing services in rotary as well as digital printing.
Though digital and rotary have their own limitations, Mahavir stresses on the fact that rotary is better than digital in many ways and vice-versa. An interesting trend increasingly being observed in the printing sphere is that both the techniques are trying to come at par with each other to provide a broader array of prospects to customers. Conversing about the tremendous improvements seen in the digital and rotary printing segments in the span of the last one year, dyeing and printing service provider Manish Khurana, MD, Shivam Terene said, “Digital printing is almost touching the production limit on account of reduced printing costs, whereas, in rotary printing new European and Japanese machines are facilitating minute graphic looking prints to cater to the custom-made segment.”
Production Quantity: Digital fast catching up
The relatively quick success of rotary screen printing and its extensive use worldwide is based on its ability to offer very strong productivity – an upper hand on digital. “I have 3 rotary machines, out of which one is dedicated only for printing on hosiery fabrics and I am able to print approx. 60-65,000 metres per day,” shares, Narendra Aggarwal, MD, Shivalik Prints.
Now with a noticeable increment in demand for digitally printed fabrics, machine manufacturers are developing machineries like the Digifab StampaJet, Kornit Storm II, Kornit Avalanche, HP Latex 300 Printer Series, HP Designjet Z6800, to name a few worth around Rs. 1-3 crore, which can print up to 4,000 metres per day. Exporters of digitally printed wool, silk and cotton fabrics, and currently using digital printers from Kornit, Sikander Peshoria, Co-owner, Garb & Guise shared, “We have a printing capacity of 7,000 metres per day doing digital printing on cotton, cashmere, wool, modal, silk and other fabric-stoles, sarees, shawls and scarves along with running length fabrics for domestic brands, fashion/textile/graphic designers and overseas buyers.” Slowly but steadily digital printing is moving ahead to provide bigger production quantities to its customers that are more suitable for mass manufacturing.
Print Quality Analysis
Quality is one very important aspect, which drives the consumer to choose one printing process over the other for the product to be printed and digital is the master of this domain. Zimmer’s ChromoJet and Colaris digital printers are able to print carpets and blankets of small pile height with great finesse but as soon as the pile height increases and gets denser, the product can only be printed by rotary as in digital process the ink penetration is not profound enough. Mahavir, presently working with automatic digital flat-bed & rotary printing machines from Japan, shares that digital printing machines require low maintenance and quality sharpness is unmatchable, but now with new high-tech features available in rotary machines, the deterioration of the rings and screens can be avoided leading to minimal mismatch and high quality output.
Rotary screens from SPGPrints, like the NovaScreen®, PentaScreen® and RandomScreen® are available which are produced by combining a high mesh count base with minimum spacing between the conical styled holes. The conical shape enables the consumer to carry out extremely fine and detailed printing even while using large paste particles, avoiding extra ink-spread, resulting into a high-quality print. Also the random distribution of conical holes significantly reduces the Moiré effect whilst printing, which means less need for trials and fewer remakes and rejects.
Where digital printing is able to create abstract, submerged, mirrored, psychedelic and photographic prints leading to its boom in high-fashion segment, on the other hand, the ability to generate discharge, burnout and foil prints make rotary a favourite in the mass market.
Costing
With capital investment on printers going up and high ROIs, costing has become one crucial segment and this is the area where digital is still behind rotary. A year back, when the cost of production of rotary printed fabrics was roughly about Rs. 10 to Rs. 15 per metre, digitally printed fabrics were ranging in the bracket of Rs. 80 to Rs. 150 per metre. Though the cost for digital is decreasing, so is that of rotary. “In Surat, the cost of rotary printing is only Rs. 5-9 per metre whereas for digitally printed fabrics it is starting from Rs. 50 per metre,”
informs Manish.
Deepak Vashisth, Owner, Dopulent Crafts, debating over the uniqueness that digital printing provides said, “Though digital is not commercially viable for bulk orders on cost and time factors, but it is able to deliver unique designs in multi-colours not achievable in rotary. Also, in coming years, if cost of digital ink and print heads comes down, and if we are able to get huge production with low maintenance cost, then a time will come when rotary styles will be replaced with digital prints.”
With the rising popularity among designers; a range of digital printed clothing were noticed on the runways of the recent Resort’15. Be it photographic prints at Alice+Olivia, or contemporized paisley prints at Dsquared2, digital print has become the language of artists to translate ideas into tangible prints. But now, as seen at Alberta Ferreti, rotary printing is also picking up, offering customization options, coming at par with digital.
Improvement in machinery
Despite the fact that both these printing processes have their own advantages, many defects arise within and remind the industry about the further scope of improvement. In rotary printing, problems of print seconds, misfits (mismatch), stick-ins, scrimps and smears/streaks are now being overcome due to improved features in printing machines. Now rotary printing machines are available with control panels on both sides of each printing position, for extra convenience. The panel enables one to control all position-related functions, such as longitudinal, lateral and diagonal repeats. There are magnetic squeegee application systems, which ensure even colour application and electronic power adjustment. Keenmark Inc., the local distributor of MHMS Rotary Screen Printing Machine ERA 12, threw light on many interesting features of the machine like, Printhead operation, where sequence controlled handling prevents faulty operation, tool – free printing width/screen length adjustment, which is done within a second, auto-setup of screens for execution of correctly matched prints, etc.
In case of digital printing, of all the technology issues to overcome, the biggest war cry heard is on the issue of print speed. And to increase the speed, either one can add more heads in a row, increase the firing frequency or increase the number of nozzles (array size), and increased array size is seen as the technology initiative taken by maximum textile printer manufacturers. Presently, textile printers from Kornit and Mimaki use 256 and 512 nozzles, respectively, whereas Digifab StampaJet uses 1440 nozzles, becoming a high-speed model.
Both the techniques are able to give out equal benefits on one factor or the other, which makes us hopeful, that in the upcoming years, there might be a time when both the techniques will be equally viable and even undistinguishable in application!
