Diversification with textiles

by Matthew | 18 April 2012 11:21 am

By Peter Saunders
Fabric graphic applications are expanding into new and unique areas as sign shops, print service providers (PSPs) and other companies seek to diversify their business. Innovative, creative and sustainable processes and products are helping push the boundaries of design in enhancing outdoor and indoor environments. Developing successful new ideas in this field depends on the right combination of printers, colour management systems and textiles.

Soft signage is a growing market. IT Strategies, a research consultancy for the digital printing industry, predicts worldwide retail expenditures on finished output from digital textile printers will reach $1.6 billion this year, up from $1.1 billion in 2008, with soft signage accounting for approximately 70 per cent of that total.

There are several reasons for this type of growth. For one, fabric-based signs offer visual prominence through their differentiation from more common paper- and vinyl-based signs; there is a widespread perception that fabric is more upscale and sophisticated. This higher perceived value can mean higher profit margins for businesses producing soft signage, which also continue to face less competition in this area than when printing on vinyl or paper.

Also, soft signage is popular with many clients—particularly in fields like exhibit graphics—because its light, flexible nature makes it easier to pack and less expensive to ship, not to mention less likely to incur damage during these processes.

“The advantage is it’s durable and washable,” says Fran Gardino, business development manager for Mimaki, a wide-format printer manufacturer.

“Trade show exhibitors will use the same fabric graphics for several years, folding them up into a crate or container each time a show ends,” says Michael Richardson, Aurora Specialty Textile Group’s director of sales and marketing for print media. “They’re stretchable and wrinkle-resistant. You don’t need to take as much care as with a stiffer material.”

Further, many clients are looking for sustainable products and processes, including water-based inks and recyclable substrates. Soft signage has come to encompass a number of ‘green’ options in this respect.

“The potential market is much bigger than signs alone,” says Gardino. “A small restaurant chain or a hotel, for example, may order not only signs, but also wallcoverings, upholstery and curtains with the same branding. Before you know it, a sign shop can produce all of that.”

“Only a handful of fabric types are used for POP graphics, signs and banners,” says Richardson, “but once you get into markets like office and home décor, you need a greater array of materials. Signmakers are uncovering applications they didn’t think of before.”

“You can even print room dividers, infills and sound absorption panels for the architecture and interior design market,” says David Siegel, director of surface imaging for Designtex, a division of office furniture supplier Steelcase that designs fabrics for commercial and institutional upholstery and furnishings. “There is much more awareness now and people’s tastes are turning toward fabric graphics.”

Pressing needs
IT Strategies reports inkjet printing has become the most common technology for producing graphics on textiles, achieving more than 45 per cent penetration of the overall soft signage market.

Dye sublimation ink printing options include direct-to-fabric, which uses pretreated textiles and a heat fixation system, and paper transfer, whereby graphics are printed onto paper and then heat-fixated onto untreated textiles.

“In the past, electrostatic (e-stat) printers and screenprinting with disperse dyes were used to produce graphics on textiles,” says Gardino, “but it became easier to produce inkjet inks than e-stat toners and screenprinting proved too expensive and time-consuming. A screen press will cost a million dollars, but you can buy 20 digital presses for the same price. So today, dye-sub is growing and a lot of architectural and point-of-purchase (POP) fabric graphics are produced digitally.”

Hitoshi Ujiie, director of the Center for Excellence of Digital Inkjet Printing for Textiles at Philadelphia University’s School of Design and Engineering, emphasizes the potential for this trend to reach the much-larger industrial textile market, too.

“The textile inkjet printing market is fragmented, with no large single market,” he says. “Outside of signage, the majority of printed textiles are still produced by screenprinting. The missing market segment includes individual artists and designers. So, there is a need for low-end, high-quality digital textile printing systems.”

As these systems become more widely available, even entry-level sign shops are now able to produce fabric graphics. Many of these shops are buying dye sublimation equipment bundled with heat presses. In some cases, the heat press is mounted directly onto the printing system.

“Heat presses and printers are merging, but there are still far more shops doing heat-transfer printing than direct-to-fabric,” says Aurora’s Richardson.

Other shops are turning to durable aqueous inkjet systems, such as those that use ‘latex’ inks. In any case, the hardware must be suitable for handling and printing textiles, which can be quite different from other substrates.

“The printheads are key and have become faster and easier to maintain,” says Gardino. “You also need a fabric handling system that applies enough tension to the substrate to keep it steady as it goes through the press, preventing it from buckling and the graphic from being distorted.”

The evolution of digital inkjet printing on textiles ramped up in the mid-1990s and only now is yielding true high-speed production presses, from manufacturers like Mimaki, Roland DGA, Durst and Konica Minolta.

“The machines will get better and faster, producing more and brighter colours,” Gardino says. “If you look at what traditional fabric printing is doing now that digital can’t do yet, that’s what clients will ask for in the future, like metallics and white inks.”

Managing colours
Accuracy and efficiency in textile printing also depend on colour management, i.e. ensuring inks will achieve the desired graphic appearance on the final substrate.

“Colour management is important for translating a graphic onto a textile, but some people aren’t doing it yet,” says Ann Laidlaw, textile supply chain manager for X-Rite, which provides spectrophotometers and software for colour profiling and management. “A colour in cotton, for example, is different from one chemically bonded in thermoplastic. Colour standards need to be communicated throughout the process. Visual evaluations must be controlled and consistent.”

The sign industry appears particularly well-poised to deal with such issues when diversifying its range of output.

“Sign shops taking on fabrics probably already have the right equipment for colour management,” says Brian Ashe, an X-Rite technical consultant to the global digital supply chain. “Each material requires its own profile and each colour has its own ‘fingerprint,’ but in today’s world of digital communications, wide-format shops are getting accustomed to having to print the same graphics on five different substrates. We’re seeing a lot of crossover.”

Material decisions
Substrate selection is another important factor, as various ink chemistries are developed for optimal use with specific products.

“You can use dye-sub on polyesters, for example, or latex inks on cotton and canvas that cannot be heat-transfer printed,” says Designtex’s Siegel.

Textiles are available for a wide range of applications, including window displays, POP graphics, wallcoverings, murals, outdoor and indoor banners, flags, backlit graphics, trade show displays, table drapes, roll-up banner stands, fine art reproductions, theatrical displays, maps and custom upholstery.

“There are hundreds of types of polyester, one for every purpose in the book,” says Gardino. “If you go to a garment district, you’ll find any kind of fabric you need is already out there. You can even find pool-table felt that’s been tweaked for digital printing!”

“Not much has changed in the processing of textiles in the past 50 years or so,” says Richardson. “The technology breakthroughs have been on the printing and ink side, running the gamut from eco-solvent to ultraviolet-curable (UV-curable) to latex to dye-sub. That technology affects substrate choice. If you’re printing direct-to-fabric, you need to buy pretreated textiles. The pretreatment is like a bath for the material. The excess dip is rolled off and you get a saturated fabric, though not heavily so. These pretreated textiles may only represent 10 per cent of the variety that heat-transfer printing can use.”

As such, research and development (R&D) efforts continue to respond to printer technologies and other elements that can affect how fabric graphics are produced.

“The fabric chemistry challenge is to achieve maximum colour output while still ensuring fire retardancy,” says Richardson. “You’ve got to hit both targets. Some fire-retardant coatings can make the material stiffer, yellower and less bright.”

Health and environmental issues are also coming to the fore, with customer requests reflecting sustainability concerns.

“We’re getting away from bromine because of its health impact,” Richardson says.  “The Canadian market is also a little more sensitive than some others to the environment, especially when serving customers like municipalities that display banners along their streets. There is a lot of call for recycled fabrics.”

“Fabrics are an environmental upgrade from vinyl, but they’re also a quality upgrade,” Siegel suggests. “They’re not just a way to replace vinyl graphics. They have their own tactile appeal and light beautifully. The industry is continuing to communicate that value to clients.”

With files from the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI), Mimaki, Aurora Specialty Textiles Group, Designtex, the Center for Excellence of Digital Inkjet Printing for Textiles and X-Rite. For more information, visit www.ifai.com[7], www.mimakiusa.com[8], www.auroratextile.com[9], www.designtex.com[10], www.philau.edu/textiledesign/center.html[11] and www.xrite.com[12].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/diversification-with-textiles/

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