Prepared for printing the way of the future

As textiles agents we clearly love fabric, colour, texture and design, but we also love the environment and are great advocates for working toward a greener more sustainable future with a traceable circular life cycle.  With nearly every industry trending towards digital technology the textile industry is no different.  It provides affordable convenience, flexibility and more speed for textile printing. 

Image credit; https://printondemanding.com/

Digital inkjet printing in the textile industry has its pros and cons of course, what it does well is bring more flexibility and speed to the end user. How it works in simple terms: digital printing acts like printing on paper with an inkjet printer giving you the ability to print patterns and colours with endless combinations.  Some of the other popular digital printing processes are dye sublimation and rotary screen printing, but we'll stick to digital inkjet printing for the time.  

It does have its limitations including the use of special colours like metallic and fluorescents.  Digital printing is normally printed on white fabrics so if you wanted a black background with a small pattern, it would be more efficient to consider a rotary screen print as the entire background colour would have to be printed black.  

Image Credit: @mb4umi via Unsplash

The speed and instant gratification of digital printing allows textile printers to provide services for smaller MQO (minimum quantity orders) be it by the roll or even by the metre in some instances for the domestic market.  This has the obvious benefit of buying what you need to fulfil orders, rather than having rolls of fabrics sitting in warehouses and hoping it's going to be sold one day.  Digital files are directly uploaded to a printer, refining the process of the traditional analogue methods.   

As businesses focus on sustainability and improving environmentally friendly practices, the reduction in waste with the ability to offer MQOs is a huge plus in the industry.   MQOs means you need to be a bit more organised, but you order what you need when you need it.  Common practice in the past was the more you ordered the cheaper the cost became as there were processes in the set-up cost and time such as in rotary screen printing, which may still be a reality in really large quantities.  

With the digital inkjet print process the data is sent directly, just pick a base cloth to have the print applied to.  Choosing from base cloths prepared for print (PFP) for applications including fabrics for curtains, water repelling base cloth for the healthcare industry, natural fibres or blended fabrics for a plethora of end uses in the textile world. The options are broad and open to the needs of the clients.   

Image credit: Adobe stock MarijaBazarova

Digital inkjet printing is water soluble and does not use petroleum and solvent based chemicals reducing the cleaning processes. In turn the amount of water required to digital print is so minimal that it’s an environmental plus.   

Digital sampling of colour combinations and designs eliminates waste with changes made without physical samples being produced. Smart designs include the process of only printing the areas that will be cut out to be used for a product. This ingenious print production reduces the inks used that would have traditionally ended up as waste.  

With this process the base cloths are PFP with fabric suppliers producing fabrics that are washed and ready for print production.  The fabric needs to be free of oils and other contaminants, for the simple reason that the ink will not adhere to oils or other contaminants compromising the vibrancy and adherence of the ink to the fabric.   

The base fabric can be soaked in a substance that makes the pigment stick to the fibres of the fabric. The fabric is quite often also heat set (most probably in a calender machine), where the water content of the ink is evaporated, and the ink binder adheres the pigment to the fibres of the fabric ensuring the digital print is the desired vibrancy and will wash and wear well.   

Image credit: cottonbee

This new way of manufacturing may be linked directly to the pandemic and keeping production onshore or just good working practices emerging from forward thinking.  If the prices for production of MQO’s does not necessarily increase, then only ordering what you need and being able to have this done locally reduces the carbon footprint of the product you are ordering, and might very well take the same amount of time that getting your fabric from overseas would take. Keeping the printing onshore is a great way of reducing the carbon footprint with strike offs easily obtainable to ensure there are no faults or issues before main print production is undertaken.    

Digital ink printing allows for a sustainable work practice to be used with MQO’s reduced and the use of resources only producing what is required as needed without the use of lots of water and excessive chemicals to produce. Digital printing and MQOs are the way forward in the textile industry, imagine how much waste would be reduced it this concept was administered throughout the entire textile industry.