No longer used only for sampling, textile ink jet printing is becoming a viable option for short run production. Two companies, Stork Prints, a global market leader for textile printing systems and Ciba, an innovative producer of specialty chemicals, offer their involvement and perspective on this expanding field.

Digital textile printing for sampling has been around for at least 10 years. Companies have benefited by having fast access to samples without the need to engrave screens or miniscreens. As a result lead time between the design and production stages has been reduced significantly.

Ink jet textile printing became more feasible as speed technology and dyes chemistry progressed. The evolution of textile ink jet printers is an interesting story. The early generation ink jet printers typically used 4 print heads, one each for the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black) inks. Theoretically, any color within the color space defined by these four colors was then achievable, heavier colors requiring more dots per inch, and lighter colors requiring less. In practice however, shades that required very little color used so few dots that the separate dots became apparent to the naked eye, a phenomenon referred to as "dithering". To solve this problem, the printer manufacturers started using more print heads, as many as 12, to allow them to use more colors. Using stronger inks allows bright or heavy shades to be achieved, while using weaker inks at the same time means using more dots to create a lighter shade, thus reducing dithering. Other ink colors (such as orange or green) could be used as well, both expanding achievable color space and reducing dither. Another advantage of adding more ink heads is the improvement in printer speed it affords. Twice as many heads can, theoretically, double the output speed of the printer. Recently, some manufacturers have even doubled the number of nozzles per head to achieve the same result. Examples of this are the Mimaki TX2 1600, an eight color 360/720 dpi piezo head printer and the Reggiani DReAM, a 600 dpi, piezo Head that prints 120 yds/hr. When Mimaki doubled the print heads on the TX1600 to produce their current TX2 1600 version the print speed went from 3 sq. yds/hr to 30 sq. yd/hr.

Capitalizing on these faster speeds, Stork Digital Imaging has started a digital printing mill – Digital Print Asia (DPA). Stork Digital Imaging (SDI), located in Boxmeer, the Netherlands, is a world-wide operating company within the Stork Prints group concentrating in the areas of digital textile printing and graphic arts printing. SDI has more than 15 years of experience as a developer and supplier of printers, software, ink, wet processing chemicals, fixation equipment and other related technology and has an installed base of over 500 units in digital sampling and small run production.


At this time, three sampling services (Bangkok, New York, the Netherlands) provide Stork U See certified samples that can be reproduced at Digital Print Asia Co. Ltd. (DPA) in Thailand. DPA’s Thailand location is the world’s first digital textile printing mill certified to produce samples according to the digital textile standard. In June, 2001, the fourth sampling service will become operational in Sri Lanka. Further expansion of this network is planned with sampling services in the UK, Spain and Japan.

With a pricing level comparable to medium to high-quality conventional printing in Europe, DPA is the proof of the availability of affordable digital printing. In the last 18 months DPA has developed a solid worldwide customer base including international brand owners in the fashion, swim- and sportwear sector such as Victoria’s Secret, Custo and Wacoal.

Websites:

Mimaki: http://www.mimakiusa.com

Reggiani: http://www.reggianimacchine.it/english/products_dream_main.htm

College of Textiles
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Raleigh, NC 27695-8301
Telephone: (919) 515-6646
FAX: (919) 515-3733
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Last Site Revision:
May 5, 2004