But Soft! Decorative and Textile Printing Offers Printers New Opportunities

Over the past several years, we have been seeing an increasing emphasis on specialty printing. Of course, specialty printing of a sort has always had a niche in the industry—pens, fridge magnets, and other promotional tchotchkes—but the capabilities of today’s printers and new inksets, both wide- and small-format, have greatly expanded the number of things that can be printed, seemingly exponentially increasing the number of high-value and high-margin applications and products.

Most recently, digital textile printing emerged as a substantial print market, with applications ranging from soft signage, to banners, to wallcoverings and other interior décor, to various types of clothing. Textile printing and garment decorating are not new, but new machines have enabled printers to offer short-run, customized and personalized articles of clothing (like T-shirts) as well as other items once the purview of analog printing technologies like screen.

Now, further decorating those textiles and garments is starting to emerge. “We’ve noticed that metal foil prints have been a big hit with customers and show attendees lately,” said Ammie Grauten, marketing manager for AnaJet. “Metal foil prints allow garment decorators to produce shiny sparkling graphic prints on T-shirts. The process is incredibly simple, and the added materials cost of only about $0.20 per shirt can add $5 to $10 in retail value for the finished product.” As they had at last year’s show, Anajet (Booth 454) will be printing non-stop, all day every day, and visitors can stop by to see a sample shirt printed while they wait. Anajet will also be demoing its mPower i-series mP5i and mP10i printer models. The mP10i can print a light shirt in as little as 20 seconds and a dark shirt in under a minute; the mP5i can double that time.

“We certainly see the textile, soft signage segment is growing,” said Ken Hanulec, vice president of marketing, inkjet solutions, for EFI. EFI (Booth 1902) has incorporated “cold cure” LED technology into its extensive line of UV wide-format printers. One of the benefits of LED vs. traditional mercury vapor curing is that is generates far less heat, which allows the machines to print on an even wider variety of substrates, such as certain types of textiles. “One of the soft signage applications that we’re doing on our roll-to-roll products, such as the VUTEk GS3250 LXR, are substrates we couldn’t previously image because the platen got too hot with some of the traditional systems,” said Hanulec. “We’re just using light instead of heat.”

Another subcategory of textile and decorative printing is wallcoverings and décor, a niche HP has been carving out for the past couple of years. “Personalized home furnishing and interior decoration are rapidly becoming popular trends,” said Xavier Garcia, vice president and general manager of HP’s Large-Format Sign and Display Division. “Benefiting from the customization possibilities of digital print, more and more sign and display print providers are expanding into new interior décor applications like wallcoverings, textiles, upholstery, flooring and decorative laminates, among others. In fact, interior décor applications are becoming a new genre of artwork, such as wallcovering collections that feature unique designs with a fine-art flair—a far cry away from traditional wallpaper patterns.”

The advent of HP’s Latex line of wide-format printers has also enabled textile printing for things like banners and soft signage. In Booth 1913, HP is demonstrating the HP Latex 3000, as well as a variety of applications from wallcoverings and temporary textiles to point-of-purchase displays and banners.

Additionally, HP partners Grimco (Booth 4257) and Prisco (Booth 3207) are demonstrating the new HP Latex 360 printer.

After all, it’s a big world—someone’s got to decorate it.