What is a digital print?
What is print media?
Whatever we print using an inkjet printer is called print media.
What is a digital textile print?
When the print media is textile, then printing is called digital textile print.
Difference between traditional (Analogue) and digital textile printing.
What kind of printer is used to print textiles?
The inkjet printer which we use in our office and home is small. These printers are generally used to print official
documents. But when we print banners, hoarding boards, textiles, etc. then we
require a wide or large format printer. Since the width of such print media is
very large that’s why we need a wide format printer.
Wide-format Printer
Most commonly used wide format printer by usage:
- Non-textile printer
- Textile
Wide-format Printer Type
Most commonly used wide format printer by type:
- Roll to roll
- Flatbed
Non-Textile printer: The wide format printer which is used to print other than textile material is the non-textile printer. Advertisement and other banner printers used in the signage industry, Uv printer that is used for rigid material like wood, ceramic tiles, etc.
Textile printer
- Dry processing
- Wet processing
Dry processing
The given name itself explains that this process does not
require water. The most common example is
·
Pigment
These are water-based ink. In some cases, pigment print
requires pretreatment also. If pigment print is applied to wearable fabric in such cases we need pretreated RFD fabric. If pigment ink is modified by
adding a binder, the feeling of such fabric after printing enhances the feeling. That
is the softness of the print increases compared to a normal pigment print. The pigment ink is water-based ink and immediately after printing they are cured by a heat press
machine.
·
Solvent
Solvent-based ink also does not require much pretreatment
before printing. The most common example of solvent-based ink print is seen on a t-shirt. These prints are also cured by heat press machines. But the place where the print is done can easily be felt by touching the printed area. Those areas
(also known as placement print) are hard. Hence these prints can only be
used in limited textiles.
·
Sublimation
This method is used
to print polyester fabric. First, the design is printed on paper, and later on, it
is transferred to fabric by using a heat press machine.
·
UV-curable inks
Are used in wide FLATBED printers, which print directly to
hard substrates such as plastic, aluminum, and wood. After printing, the ink is cured by exposing
it to strong UV light.
Basically, there are two types of printers: Roll to roll and flatbed
Basically, there are two types of printers: Roll to roll and flatbed
Roll To Roll Printer
DTG stands for Direct-to-Garment printing. It is a modern printing technique using a specialized inkjet printer to print directly onto fabric. It is also dry processing in terms of the printing process. DTG printing differs from traditional textile printing methods, such as screen printing or heat transfer printing, which involve applying ink or designs onto a separate transfer medium before transferring it onto the fabric.
DTG printing allows highly detailed and colorful designs to be printed directly onto various fabrics, including cotton, polyester, and blends. The printing process is relatively fast and allows for on-demand printing, which is helpful for small production runs and customized orders.
One of the advantages of DTG printing over other textile printing methods is that it can produce high-quality prints with a soft feel, which makes it ideal for printing on garments such as t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts.
In summary, DTG printing is a type of textile printing that involves printing directly onto fabric using an inkjet printer. It differs from other textile printing methods, such as screen printing or heat transfer printing.
One of the advantages of DTG printing over other textile printing methods is that it can produce high-quality prints with a soft feel, which makes it ideal for printing on garments such as t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts.
In summary, DTG printing is a type of textile printing that involves printing directly onto fabric using an inkjet printer. It differs from other textile printing methods, such as screen printing or heat transfer printing.
Textile ink (wet Processing)
Textile inks are dye-based ink. They are made from textile
dyestuffs. That is the dyes, which are made for dyeing the fabric are used
to make ink. Commonly used textile inks are:
·
Reactive
Reactive inks are made from reactive dyestuffs. They are
specially used to print cellulosic fiber. These fibers are made with esters or ethers
of cellulose. These are obtained from the bark, leaf, and seed of a plant. So
reactive ink is primarily used to print cotton and synthetic cotton fibers.
·
Acid
Are specially used on animal protein firer like wool and silk.
Synthetic fiber like polyamide (nylon) is also printed using acid ink.
·
Disperse
Disperse ink is made from dispersing dye. This ink is used to
print polyester fiber.
As reactive ink is used in almost all fibers except polyester
fiber, nowadays, all wet-processing textile industries use reactive ink.
The difference between dye and pigment ink:
Both are water-based ink. The basic difference is that.
dye-based ink is water-soluble but pigments are not.
The easiest way to understand this is
dye= salt
pigment= sand
if you add salt to the water, it dissolves in it. After printing and drying water evaporates and after steaming dyes react with fiber and become part of the fiber.
but sand does not dissolve and needs some chemicals like binders and temperature to adhere to the fabric.
Here is another post on Reactive Vs Acid Ink
Textile printing machine manufacturer
- · Mutoh
- · Mimaki
- · Konica Minolta
- · Epson
- · Atexco
There are so many brands in the market.
You may read this post if you want to know more about the Textile printing manufacturers list.
It entirely depends on
what type of machine you need as per your budget. Prices depend on the speed and other
features of the machine. Nowadays, single-pass machines are also available. These
machines are very fast and produce many times faster than carriage-moving machines
(multi-pass machines). So very big garment export companies may require single-pass machines. A single-pass machine can print up to forty meters per minute, whereas
a multi-pass machine cannot print more than a few meters per minute.
Ink: Initially, digital printers were made using only CMYK ink. To cover more details, other light colors are also added. So Nowadays all option machines are available.
An example Branded Printer:
Selection of ink
Every machine manufacturer supplies making their own brand
name. Because of their service and warranty, customer cannot refuse their offer.
In fact, there are very few textile ink manufacturers worldwide. They supply the
ink to traders and machine manufacturers. There are few technical points because
of that customers are loyal to their offer. These technical points include the viscosity of ink and its compatibility with the installed head. For example, if a
printer is running on dx5 head, ink should also be made as per the configuration
of the head. It is better to buy ink directly from the manufacturer if the situation can be handled by prompt support.
You may read this post if you want to know more about Ink manufacturers.
Textile Ink manufacturer
- · Huntsman
- · DyStar
- · Dupont
- · Kornit
- · Solunaris
- · BASF
- · Hongsam
- · Kornit
.
Viscose is the fastest-growing fiber in the textile ink business.
Reactive is the fastest-growing ink in the textile ink business. Since reactive
ink is very popular these days. It has occupied almost all ink markets among the ink
type. Here, we will mainly discuss reactive ink. First of all, let us see
the flow chart of digital textile printing.
Before Talking about fabric processing, let’s talk about the Technical part of designing artwork for printing
·
Printing Resolution
The printing resolution makes a difference only if the print
is to be seen from a close distance. So If a print is seen from a short
distance, it should be printed with high resolution. For example, a dress,
scarf, bed sheet, etc. If any print is seen from a distance, like
billboards. The high-resolution number is 300 dpi or more. Low resolution 72
PPI or less. Depending upon the print image size, it can also be compromised. If a
file is very large at 300 PPI, it can be reduced to 150 DPI if the print
quality is not noticeably reduced. If the details are very small, they may be
missed if printed in low resolution, so we should increase the resolution in
such a case.
·
Printing Resolution vs File Resolution (DPI vs
PPI )
The name itself defines the issue. Printer resolution is
generally 540-2440 dpi. This varies from printer to printer. The resolution density
is also directly propositional to the printer pass. Printer resolution is also
defined from x and y-axis values, like 540x540 dpi. So printer pass and
horizontal and vertical values together define the resolution.
Color Profile:
The most commonly used profile is ICC
Profile. In 1993 companies like Adobe and Microsoft made an association to define
color profiles for input and output devices.
Color Profile: The most commonly used profile is ICC
Profile. In 1993 companies like Adobe and Microsoft made an association to define
color profiles for input and output devices.
·
International Color Consortium (ICC)
While creating a file for printing ICC profile is used in a
file, whereas a printer, especially a large format printer, uses its own profile
to get the desired color after printout.
Large format printing machine: Almost all printers are based
on inkjet technology. Hence they are called inkjet printers.
Vector Vs Raster
In fact, all printing designs are made in vector format.
Vector format technically can be expanded to any size at the time of printing. Vector
format graphics are created using lines, curves, and points based on mathematical equations rather than square
pixels. The common software that is used to create vector graphics are
- · Adobe illustrator
- · Corel draw
Commonly used vector
format file extension.
- · AI
- · SVG
- · EPS
Adobe Illustrator Vs Adobe Photoshop
Illustrator is a vector-based software, and Photoshop is a raster-based software. The design which we make in Illustrator is later rasterized in
Photoshop. And saved in raster format in Photoshop. The difference between the two software can be defined
simply as the one made in Illustrator cannot be pixelated even after zooming.
Whereas after rasterizing in Photoshop, the same design made in Illustrator
gets pixelated beyond its print size.
Raster Files.
PNG, GIF, JPEG, and Tiff have commonly used picture formats. Most of the files other than TIFF are saved in compressed format. Hence Tiff is the most commonly used printing file in digital print.
Here is another post on the Image requirement of artwork for printing.
Design Studio
To develop a printable design from the given sample following
tools are required.
Computers with the latest processor:
- Pre-installed Genuine 64 bit Windows 10 OS
- Licensed latest Version Adobe Software: Illustrator, Photoshop
- A Powerful Dedicated Graphics Memory (like Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080)
- 4K monitor (color calibrated for true color)
- Latest Processor (Like Intel, core i7, 6th generation)
- SSD with an external HDD
- Ram:32/64 GB
Graphic tablet
graphic tablets are the biggest tool available nowadays for designers. The mouse has limited use only, replacing the mouse with tablets and pens can reduce the effort as well as time.
 |
| Graphic pen Tablet |
DSLR Camera, scanner
A high-end camera and scanner are required to develop the design
Lighting and other studio arrangements.
Pretreatment
Pretreatment: This is the first process of digital textile
printing. In this process, the fabric is treated with chemicals using a padding
mangle. Chemicals are applied to the surface of the fabric to enhance the
print. All the chemicals applied here are of their own significance during fabric processing. The number of such chemicals is pre-defined. Thus the supplier provides the recipe for such chemicals according to ink chemistry. The
main chemicals used for pretreatment are:
- · Sodium bicarbonate
- · Urea
- · Resist Salt
- · Printing gum (Sodium alginate)
These chemicals are applied uniformly with the help of a padding
machine.
Here is a video which further explains the process.
Post-treatment:
After printing, the
ink on the fabric is just raw, and they need to be fixed in fibre by steaming. At
the time of steaming dyes in the fire react with the fiber and they become part of the fabric. Steaming is done by using a steam ager machine and generally, the fabric is
kept inside the ager at 104 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes. To achieve 104 temperature
depending on the condition 1 per kg-cm per square pressure is required.
Washing
Steamed fabric is first washed in running
water, then washed in shop boiling water, and finally washed multiple times
with cold water. Here all unreacted dyes are washed out and only reacted dyes
are in fiber. Thus they become part of the fiber and they cannot be
extracted from finer. The dyes which are in fiber can be affected by various
parameters. Such as exposure to sunlight, washing, rubbing, etc. are defined by
the dyes manufacturer. They define the scale, which is called fastness. For
example, the optimum level of lightfastness is 8., If the manufacturer of the dye has given
6 out of 8 for the lightfastness of a particular dye then 6 is good whereas 3 or 4 is
considered poor. A dye having 3 light fastnesses can fade while exposed to
sunlight.
There are many factors that may cause unwanted final print
results in Digital textile printing. To achieve a high level of print results first, we have to go through the processing flowchart. Once we understand it better we
can easily figure out or pinpoint the weakness or error. Let’s again see the whole processing with the detailed processing and the potential error and step to be taken after each processing. By using this flow chart we can calculate the cost, and required the number of manpower, and pinpoint any issue that arises during processing.
Cost Evaluation:
The following are the factor to evaluate the cost per square meter
- Padding
- Ink
- Electricity
- water
- Fuel
- Detergent and softener
- Labor
- Factory Rent
- Capital Investment
- Repair and maintenance
- Miscellaneous
- Profit Margin of %
Business model:
Digital textile printing is a very innovative concept. Everything
nowadays is converting into a digital system. So this is the ultimate printing
process for the future. Hence this process needs to be practiced by good management and
team. Only then this process flourishes successfully. Let’s have a look at the hierarchy required
for this business.
Digital Textile printing in developing countries
Digital
textile printing is an innovative concept for countries like Nepal, where
almost all printing on fabric is run by traditional printing processes like
screen printing. The Digital printing process has been increasing every year
replacing screen printing. Nepal earns very remarkable foreign currency by exporting,
garments, and handicrafts like silk and pashmina scarves. So the export market has
a very good demand for printed garments and pashminas. Digital printing is the
first choice of buyers. So placing a digital printing factory here in Nepal is
a good decision.
I have been passionately involved in digital textile
printing for more than a decade. I have seen many ups and downs during this time.
So looking back on the time I spent I can summarize the following point.
As per the flow chart (see above evaluation flow chart) of digital textile printing, we need to
automatize every process replacing human hands with automatic machines. This is
the first choice. If this is not our option we need to hire a person who
can handle the fabric processing without showing any human handling errors. In
my view, more than 50% of rejections are seen because of a handling
error.
⦁ A responsible supervisor
Who looks after all the processes involved in digital printing?
Making an order sheet following the printing operator as per the given print
order. and finally, deliver the fabric as per the sample.
⦁ Manager
Looking after the whole system with given instructions and mission.
(planning, organizing, leading, and controlling ). There could be other managers
like Marketing managers, human resource managers, and operation managers.
⦁ Designer
All graphic designers are not textile designers. Making design
with tracing, scanning, and photographs can be done very comfortably and it is
very challenging to get desired shade. We need tools like a high-end camera and a
scanner with a studio-like arrangement.
⦁ and a dedicated team
A dedicated team will always be inspired by good instructions. So
Uncommon tips and clear. This will be to a great degree supportive for me when I get a chance to start my blog. 1000 business cards
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