history of the digital printing

As little as 15 years ago digital printing of textiles, compared with paper for the relatively benign office environment, no doubt looked like mission impossible. The demands of the textile application are extreme. Among them:

• more than a half dozen common types of synthetic and natural fibres, each with its own ink compatibility characteristics;
• dealing with a stretchable, flexible, often highly porous and textured surface;
• extreme use requirements including light, water fastness (sweat, too) through finishing operations and often outdoor use, heavy wear, abrasion, and cleaning;
• for some apparel applications, challenging registration requirements since separate pieces need to be assembled;
• not just sight, but also touch requirement;
• much greater absorbancy, requiring many times the ink volume compared with printing on papers.

In the face of such odds, digital textile printing is happening. The traditional valve jet machines are digital and have been around a long time, but they are appropriate primarily for large volume, centralized manufacturing. The newer digital printing technologies open things up for a wide variety of incremental applications. Tremendous progress has been made, but there are still many challenges. However, the opportunities for high-value digital printer applications are so large that many hardware and chemistry vendors are investing heavily in textile and textile-related products and systems.

It is still clearly new territory, but we’ve progressed beyond curiosity seekers, says I.T. Strategies. Printer and textile manufacturers know that this new opportunity is important to their companies. It’s a new frontier, it’s something like the old Wild West. Some of the energy is from the existing textile industry. Some from outside, like Colorlab, Ltd. That’s the color processor in Providence, RI, who decided to refocus his business entirely on fabric printing. Their new company name is Practical Imaging. (See detailed case below.)

Another thing new is the much wider variety of fabrics that can now be digitally printed: silks, polyester, car seats, cotton. Actually, now almost everything can be printed. It’s something like the development of digital presses. At first they required a narrow selection of closely controlled papers. Now they are much more flexible. Textiles is already going this way. But each of these materials has its own ink requirements.

And another problem is getting the ink to go through all the fiber. There are silk scarfs and car seats. And nonwovens such as Tyvek®--incredibly different requirements. Indeed, inks are a major frontier and a number of ink companies want to know more.

Other important issues include mass customization and how to deal with the reality that there need to be integrated solutions involving a sequence of operations such as pre-treating, printing, finishing, cutting and sewing. This poses a contradiction: digital printing opens the door for on-demand and decentralized manufacture. But how do you deal with these pre- and post-printing requirements in an office or other decentralized environment? One long-term market trend, for example, includes the movement of textiles and apparel manufacturing to SE Asia. Less than 5% of the world’s textile printing production was said to still be in North America. And there are some negative fashion trends, such as increasing preference toward single colors rather than printed patterns. Will digital printing offset or accommodate such trends?