Dreamweavers Part I: An Introduction to Fabric Printing

This month, we kick off a four-part series on fabric printing. In this debut installment, we’ll take the 20,000-foot approach (and, no, it won’t be a nightmare) and look at some basic definitions, technologies, and the market opportunities in general.

If you have been to an SGIA Expo or even a Graph Expo in recent years, you know that textile printing is all the rage. The past few years have seen a veritable explosion of textile and fabric-printing applications. According to InfoTrends, in 2013, digital textile printing worldwide “accounted for about 600 million square meters of printed fabrics that are estimated to grow at 39 percent CAGR by 2018 to about 30 billion square meters.” It’s difficult to find bearish forecasts of digital textile printing.

In January, at EFI Connect, the company was highlighting its recent acquisition of Reggiani, a manufacturer of digital textile printing equipment. At the user conference, Michele Riva, Sales and Marketing Director of EFI Reggiani, gave a keynote presentation entitled “Opportunities in Digital Textile Printing,” which offered a broad overview of the current textile printing landscape, a landscape, said Riva, that amounts to 50 billion meters of fabric a year. Here’s the kicker, though: at present, less than five percent of that is produced on digital equipment. “This is a good reason to enter into the digital textile markets,” said Riva. “We believe it will grow to 10 to 15 percent.”

It’s difficult to find bearish forecasts of digital textile printing.

There are many ways of decorating textiles; printing is, for our purposes, the most conspicuous, but embroidery, sewing, and appliques are other primary means that are still used today. The Ralph Lauren “Polo” icon is sewn onto the company’s shirts, and for those who remember the Izod Lacoste “crocodile” shirts that were trendy in the preppy 1980s (and reportedly still are), those reptiles were embroidered patches.

Printing on textiles—garments, specifically—has, over the centuries, been accomplished using virtually every printing technology at one time or another. In the 1960s, screen printing began to be applied to T-shirts (the first application: bowling shirts) and during the late ’60s, rock band and concert tees became popular among the Woodstock Generation. Screen printing is still used for many garment printing applications, particularly large-quantity ones, but digital direct-to-garment inkjet printers—such as those from Anajet (recently acquired by Ricoh) and Epson—can print directly onto cotton to produce short-run T-shirts and other apparel, or even accessories like tote bags. And now, dye-sublimation, latex, and other inkjet-based printers are expanding the range of what textile applications can be printed.

Fabric Applications

In general, textile or fabric printing falls into three broad categories:

• Garments/apparel, which can include T-shirts, hats/caps, sportswear, bags, jackets/hoodies, towels, children’s/infants’ wear, uniforms, swimwear, scarves, ties, and more.
• Signage, often called “soft signage,” which can include banners, posters, point-of-sale/point-of-purchase displays, trade-show displays, flags, backdrops, and more.
• Décor, which can include wallpaper, curtains, drapes, furniture coverings, tables, chairs—you name it.

Indeed, on this last point, at EFI Connect was a small exhibit called “The Printed Home of the Future,” which featured chairs, throw pillows, lampshades, window treatments, and flooring—all digitally printed.

Textile/fabric printing can be used to produce either continuous rolls of decorated fabric, which will then later be sewn into the finished product, or to decorate a finished product directly.

In the signage category in particular, textile-based signage has several key advantages over other substrates, such as rigid materials.

“Trade show graphics and displays where companies supply larger, lightweight displays—mainly made of textiles—can be put up and taken down more easily and faster with less cost of shipping due to the lighter weight,” said Tommy Martin, Manager, Textile and Apparel Business Development, for Mimaki USA. And, he added, “if the display gets dirty or damaged, it’s easier to clean and repair vs. hard panels.”

Last year, Mimaki debuted its 77-inch TS300P production dye-sub transfer printer, and at the SGIA Expo in November was previewing a new direct-to-fabric dye-sub printer that is scheduled to ship sometime in 2016.

In the décor category, said Martin, “hotels are using embellished textiles for everything from light and shade covers, window treatments, wall coverings, noise and visual blockers, to art, custom upholstery, and more.”

Soft signage is also used for commercial indoor and outdoor advertising in sports arenas and stadiums, convention centers, malls, airports—virtually anywhere. As I point out in this month’s Wide Format & Signage, retailers and brandowners both are making heavy use of textiles for POP and other retail graphics, largely due to the environmental friendliness of fabrics, even polyesters, compared to materials like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and other plastics. Still, it’s not necessarily the case that soft signage is directly replacing what we might call “hard” signage. “I don’t feel that soft signage is so much replacing hard signage as it is creating demand,” said Martin. Like most applications transformed by digital printing, the ability to do short runs and add customization has enabled entirely new applications.

If a print service provider has to pick a niche to go after, it could be said that “it’s all good.” “It’s difficult to say what market is the hottest,” said Martin. “I’ve seen an increase in Internet retailing for garments and promotional products as well as soft signage for POP, trade show displays, and retail displays.”

Fabric Printing Technologies

Just about any ink technology can be used to print on fabric, although some are better-suited to it than others, and some are better-suited to certain fabrics than others. And while analog printing processes like screen remain popular, we will be concentrating on digital textile printing in this and future articles in this series.

Dye-sublimation is a fast-growing digital printing technology for textiles, and its advantages include a wide color gamut and vivid colors, ideal “hand” (or how the printed fabric feels against the hand or the body when worn), and the ability to withstand multiple wash cycles. Most dye-sublimation printers use a transfer medium; they print on a transfer paper which is then pressed against the fabric and the image is transferred under heat and pressure (newer systems can print direct-to-garment without a transfer medium, and next month’s installment of this series will compare and contrast these two approaches). Some disadvantages include the expense of a transfer medium and lack of UV resistance.

Latex printers use inks that are water-based, so they’re a bit more environmentally friendly than other options, fast-drying, produce no hazardous vapors (like solvent inks do), resistant to solvents such as cleaning compounds, lightfast, and can adhere to a wide variety of indoor and outdoor textile materials. Some of the disadvantages of latex include lack of durability and, in some cases, lack of abrasion-resistance, as well as high energy consumption for the drying process.

Solvent inks can print on textiles, and since these types of inks are among the most inexpensive, can be a cost-effective solution. Solvent inks are also fast-drying, waterproof, and durable, but can require specially coated or treated fabrics to enable ink adhesion and durability. Then there are the usual hazardous vapor and disposal issues inherent to solvent inks.

UV printers and inks have penetrated (so to speak) into many specialty printing applications, and while they are not ideal for textiles, they can be used if need be. The killer app of UV is that it can print on virtually any material, and UV inks are lightfast and, needless to say, UV-resistant. They are also fast-drying and cure under low energy, especially those that use LED curing. Still, UV inks are expensive compared to other inks, and since UV-printed image is essentially a polymer film, it can stiffen the fabric, which may not be comfortable if used for, say, apparel. UV may also require pretreatment to get the ink to adhere to the fabric. UV inks are also not ideal for textile printing applications that require duplexing.

There is also a hybrid technology called solvent UV which, as the term implies, combines the two ink technologies. “Solvent UV ink marries the best of solvent and UV,” said Martin. “The solvent component attacks the acceptance layer of the media, fixing the pigment. The subsequent UV curing contributes to durability and produces vivid colors with a smooth, glossy finish.” Solvent UV is best for exterior soft signage and interior décor applications.

Epson and Anajet use water-based pigment inks in their direct-to-garment printers, which allows these devices to print on 100% cotton and cotton blends—in contrast to dye-sublimation printers which are limited to polyesters.

The Road Ahead

There may be no better time for print service providers to get into some type of textile and fabric printing. “Because of the advancements in different textiles, new and improving inks types, and faster print solutions, there’s no better time than the present,” said Martin. “Performance apparel, smart textiles [wearable computers or “e-textiles”], industrial/military textiles all need embellishment that adds demand and value.”

And at EFI Connect, Michele Riva discussed the integration of EFI Reggiani equipment with EFI’s software suites, which will allow the integration of digital textile printing and ecommerce and web-to-print. Think about ordering customized clothing, shoes, home furnishings, and more. Some companies are already doing this today, and there is more than ample room for growth.