Digital Textile Printing experts from SPGPrints organized a successful webinar on creating the optimal future-proof printing process (with digital sublimation printing) on 6th July 2021. A large numbers of textile industry professionals worldwide attended the on-demand webinar.
Denis Jahic, Sales Consultant Digital Textile introduced SPGPrints and Digital Textile. SPGPrints’ Technical Specialist Digital Textiles, René Wolferink presented tips and tricks on making the digital printing process future-proof and more successful.
Denis Jahic, Sales Consultant Digital Textile said, “In this webinar, we will explain how to overcome challenges in sublimation printing related to printer, ink, software, paper, color-matching. How to optimize your workflow for high-speed printing to get the same production output all the time and what is needed to manage operational costs. How all these aspects can help to be sustainable and at the same time stay very attractive for your customer. In the end, you have to create more business and generate more profit by entering a new market like e-commerce which is the fastest growing business for the last two years.”
He added, “In the digital textile portfolio, we offer our customers several solutions based on Archer Technology from PIKE® – a single-pass printer with a production speed of 60 m/min reaching daily production output of 70,000 meters with the highest printing resolution. To his smaller brother JAVELIN® which is a scanning type of printer using the same technology as PIKE® with 550 sqm/h and daily output of 5000 sqm.”
“The new development for sublimation paper transfer printing, we have our ARROW® that is an industrial printer with high printing performance reaching nearly 500 sqm per hour. It is available in four and eight colors includes florescent Magenta and Yellow. It has a very robust paper handling system that can easily handle light paper. With ARROW®, we are targeting customers that need a solid solution for the fashion and sportswear market.”
“All the above printers are running on already well-known SPGPrints Inks. We develop and produce these inks in-house to achieve great runnability, nice and brilliant colors helping the customers to be very attractive with their designs,” he concluded.
SPGPrints’ Technical Specialist Digital Textiles, René Wolferink said, the name of this webinar is the Optimal Future Proof printing process. From optimal you want to become easy to use, environmentally friendly, efficient, and cost-effective.”
He added, “With small plotter machines, if one machine breakdown, you should have several machines which can do the same job. All these traditional systems usually have a closed ink system. The manufacturer always depends on the supplier of the plotter. Closed ink system is less cost-effective when compared with open ink systems. Changing paper is also sometimes can be more of a hassle on those types of machines.”
He further said, “If you look at the industrial speed machines, they have much bigger printouts, the single head doing eight colors or four colors. You might have Kyocera heads in there in one or two roll configurations. Of course, those machines will have a much higher print speed than the small volume plotters. That is a more efficient way of printing with one operator to drive such a machine with time efficiency.”
“There are numerous paper choices for a weight ranging from less than 20 grams to 150 grams. Another is coated and uncoated paper. Coated paper usually is more expensive, we all know that. It absorbs the colors better and can more easily release colors. From a cost perspective, a coated paper can decrease ink costs.”
He concluded, “ARROW® is an entry-level industrial printer without pinch rollers. The jumbo rolls are also possible. It has 16 KM heads in 4 rows of 4, dual-channel. The configuration of colors is 4 or 8 colors. The heads do not need any negative pressure system as many other industrial printers need. That makes it a little more user-friendly and maintenance-friendly from that point of view. Therefore, it has a simple cleaning system, and very important that it has an open ink system. The challenges that we see in making an optimal printer process. There is a choice of paper, ink, machine, color management, and RIP. There is also a choice of ink such as runnability, reproducibility, compatibility, and Fluor or not.”
Customer case for SPGPrints® ARROW® digital sublimation printer and sublimation inks
The market for one of the SPGPrints customers was expanding to do all kinds of prints. ARROW® was the solution for this customer. They felt that for their old printer that they could not had support from their local application experts.
As soon as they got ARROW®, they noticed that we have a presence in all the different regions. Therefore, we were able to help them to optimize their processes. One of the main things was the fact that we have local ink stock. They do not have to order tonnes of ink every time because SPGPrints sublimation inks stock is locally available in the desired quantity.
The customer noticed long runs up to 20,000 M and was satisfied with the output quality. They are printing in general 150 lm/hr with two-pass mode. Their average ink consumption is 1.38ml/m2 with the optimal print quality and less maintenance.
