Wide-format Printing: The transition to fabric graphics

by all | 18 February 2016 3:01 pm

By Peter Saunders
While wide-format digital printing on vinyl has revolutionized the sign industry over the past few decades, the digital printing of fabrics is having an even more significant impact on businesses today, as the vast and diversified textile industry represents a much larger opportunity for inkjet technologies to address.

As Canada’s Digital Imaging Association (DIA) pointed out at a fabric-focused meeting in 2015, inkjet printing is enabling “a shift from heavily labour-based supply to digital premium applications, including roll-to-roll and direct-to-garment items, with fast delivery and an emphasis on creativity and quality.”

Last October, the Federation of European Screen Printers Associations (FESPA) held its second Chinese expo at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. Post-event surveys show 54 per cent of participants are involved in textile printing. The textile-focused conference sessions at FESPA China 2015, in particular, proved popular with attendees.

The high level of interest in digital textile printing continued the following month at the 2015 Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA) Expo. Mark J. Shaneyfelt, director of print media sales and marketing for Aurora Specialty Textiles Group, presented a seminar titled Profitable Trends in Fabric Printing.

“The major trends we saw at the show include a dramatic increase in soft signage and wide-format fabric printing,” says Shaneyfelt. “There’s a growing awareness of the impact digital textile printing is having. This is a rapidly growing market and we see a multitude of new opportunities opening for everyone.”

“There’s been a big shift from analogue to digital in textile systems, including both dye sublimation and direct inkjet printers,” says Dan Marx, SGIA’s vice-president (VP) of markets and technology.

Where growth is happening
Shaneyfelt cites global industry studies estimating 1 billion m² (10.8 billion sf) of textiles were digitally printed in 2015 and forecasting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30 per cent or more through 2019. Of this growth, 75 per cent will fall within the soft signage category, ranging from trade show displays (see page 32) to banners to framed graphics to point-of-purchase (POP) graphics.

“Based on the projected market data, demand for soft signage is one of the strongest growth segments in the printing industry,” he says. “Textiles have begun to take centre stage and the transition is not slowing down.”

One market where this trend is particularly visible is retail, where many marketers are choosing fabrics to give their promotional graphics a sense of elegance. In addition to the natural drape, look and feel of fabrics, retailers also benefit from the materials’ low weight and flexibility, which allow graphics to be inexpensively shipped and stored, easily handled and stretched to fit around curves and angles.

“Every surface is an advertising opportunity,” says Shaneyfelt, “and textiles are more forgiving than other materials during installation. There are also systems that use frames and silicone gaskets to provide leeway for the fabric so it fits snugly, preventing it from looking baggy. Some knits have a stretch component, but this can be an issue when they’re being run through the printing equipment. There’s a learning curve, but signmakers who are wary at first become comfortable with it.”

At trade shows, too, exhibitors benefit from lower costs for shipping and assembling booths that combine fabrics with framing systems. Given how the flexibility of fabrics also makes them more abrasion-resistant than vinyl graphics, they are proving better at surviving busy trade shows without damage, allowing the graphics to be reused at other events in the future.

“You can fold up fabric trade show booth graphics with some bubble wrap between them to avoid hard creases and you’ll get a lot of life out of them,” says Shaneyfelt.

For the same reasons of durability and ease of transport and setup, fabric graphics are also becoming more popular outdoors at concerts, festivals and sporting events. In some cases, they are attached directly to existing structures, e.g. wall murals; in others, they are stretched across portable framing systems.

Moving beyond the typical commercial applications produced by the signage industry, digitally printed textiles are proving a major draw for customized home décor, including upholstery, drapes, tablecloths, pillows and fine art reproductions.

“As a result, while sign shops are traditionally business-to-business (B2B), some wide-format printing companies are developing a business-to-consumer (B2C) side,” says Shaneyfelt. “The lines are getting blurred with companies like Spoonflower, which lets people order custom-printed fabrics online. They are always seeking new types of textiles, so the fabrics are constantly evolving for different applications, with antimicrobial coatings, ultraviolet (UV) inhibitors and fire-rated materials.”

“We love fabrics for home décor,” says Elmo Sapwater, a photographic industry expert who blogs as the Imaging Insider. “You can customize fine-art photos for people’s homes and then easily change them out.”

Of course, there is also a commercial market for customized décor, particularly as large corporate office buildings seek to beautify their lobbies and other communal spaces with creatively designed fabric structures.

“Textiles can be integrated into overall building designs,” says Shaneyfelt.

The tools for the job
Already, many new presses, inks and substrates have been specially designed for the digital printing of wide-format fabric graphics. Printer manufacturer HP, by way of example, has focused on developing durable aqueous ‘latex’ inkjet machines in recent years, in part because the company identified digital printing on textiles as one of its major target markets for growth.

“The third-generation HP latex printers optimize fabric graphics with a pre-treatment that enhances the ink’s ability to grab onto the surface, which makes major strides for its durability and scratch resistance,” says Shaneyfelt. “The ability to saturate the substrate differentiates fabric graphics from papers and vinyls, where ink is applied to the top layer of the material. The type of ink can also affect the drape, feel and hand of the fabric.”

“Our printers are being used for temporary textile graphics—in contrast with dye sublimation for permanent ones—and their odourless inks are a good fit for applications that need to meet indoor air quality (IAQ) requirements, such as in schools, hospitals, restaurants and hotels,” says Mike Duggan, national high-volume sales manager for HP Canada’s Scitex printers. “Unlike dye sublimation, they can print on unique and natural fabrics, including porous textiles without liners. This is why we’ve expanded our media options.”

“Textiles are great for storefront window displays,” adds Tina Forbes, graphic design and colour management specialist for Coveris Advanced Coatings, which develops, manufactures and distributes coated papers, films and other substrates for digital imaging. “Pole-pocket displays can be arranged with lamps for backlighting or uplighting in the store window. A 100 per cent polyester-woven fabric will ensure strong black ink density.”

For all of these reasons, polyester-based textiles are now dominating the soft signage market. They can handily be dye-sublimated for permanent graphics or latex-printed for shorter-term applications.

“Some shops start out printing on cotton and nylon, but then see the benefits of polyester-based fabrics,” says Shaneyfelt. “They might bring in a latex printer for a small set of applications and then apply it to more as they see what it can do. Then they end up adding a heat press to create a ‘hybrid’ business. And on the other side, applications that were previously only possible with dye sublimation transfer printing are now transitioning to digital direct printing. There used to be a dye-sub/latex split, as each technology has its ‘sweet spot,’ but now the envelope is being pushed on both sides.”

The appeal of dye sublimation
Indeed, even while latex printers from HP and other manufacturers—such as Mimaki—have grown by leaps and bounds, so has the appeal of dye sublimation to sign shops.

“It’s one of the fastest-growing market segments,” says Mark Maynard, raster image processor (RIP) software developer Onyx Graphics’ general manager (GM) for the Americas. “The equipment—especially the roll-fed heat presses for finishing—used to be cost-prohibitive and took up too much space for many sign shops, but that was also the case when the first wide-format printers became available and needed to be paired with laminators. We see a lot of signmakers investing in their first dye sublimation printer with a smaller heat press, so they can start off with smaller-format images on mouse pads, jerseys, socks, etc. Then, once they get that business going and realize it’s not much more expensive or difficult than printing and laminating vinyl, they scale up to a bigger heat press and produce large-format output.”

As such, dye sublimation has come to represent a significant opportunity for sign shops to expand upon their existing business. While it has proven a highly profitable method for producing trade show displays and other types of signage that mostly use fabrics today, it also supports diversification into everything from customized socks to coffee mugs to mobile phone covers to wallets.

“I’ve seen snowboards dye-sublimated in Western Canada,” says Maynard, “and some hotels that use latex printing for wallpaper are complementing it with dye-sublimated fabrics that serve as sound-bending pieces of art. In all of these cases, the ability to cost-effectively customize one-off applications is driving the market. It’s not just retailers that are always changing out their textile graphics—in an on-demand society, you also see one-off pillows printed to match drapes in the home décor market.”

In another example, echoing Sapwater, Maynard cites benefits for the photographic industry, where dye-sublimated prints on coated aluminum, let alone fabrics, are more durable and earn a higher price markup than traditional photo papers. Again, changes in market demand and technology are making dye sublimation—which is not new—increasingly attractive for sign shops’ production departments.

“Dye sublimation is already very big in Europe, Asia and Latin America,” he says. “Brazil is a huge market, for example, because the cost to import clothing there is high, so local businesses use dye sublimation in the manufacturing of garments. It’s still in the early stages in North America, but it’s starting to take off.”

“A lot of our customers are curious about dye sublimation,” says Lily Hunter, printer/cutter vendor Roland DGA’s product manager for textiles and consumables. “They ask about the capabilities of printers in this respect, as well as where to get a heat press, blanks and all of the other equipment they’ll need to create soft signage. We have entry-level dye-sub printers that can be paired with a variety of rotary heat presses to get them started. A lot more of the technology is now available as a turnkey system.”

Roland, for its part, bundles special inks, firmware, waveforms, generic profiles and RIP software with its dye-sub printers, to meet the needs of small to mid-size shops that produce soft signage, such as banners and flags. Sign supply distributors, meanwhile, are going further by offering complete dye-sub packages that combine printers, heat presses, consumables and, perhaps most helpfully, finishing equipment.

“The biggest challenge with textiles is finishing,” says Aurora’s Shaneyfelt. “Some fabrics cut easily, while others need to be hot-knifed to seal their edges.”

It’s not all on the signmaker’s shoulders, however. As both Hunter and Shaneyfelt point out, many sign shops outsource the sewing of fabric graphics to other, more specialized businesses, allowing them to focus on their strengths in image production.

“Even if you’re not equipped to handle every step of the process, that shouldn’t stop you from getting started,” says Hunter.

With files from DIA, FESPA, SGIA, Aurora Specialty Textiles Group, HP Canada, the Imaging Insider, Coveris Advanced Coatings, Onyx Graphics and Roland DGA. For more information, visit
www.digitalimagingassoc.ca[1], www.fespa.com[2], www.sgia.org[3], www.auroratextile.com[4], www.hp.ca[5], www.imaginginsider.com[6], www.magicinkjet.com[7], www.onyxgfx.com[8] and www.rolanddga.com[9].

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/wide-format-printing-the-transition-to-fabric-graphics/

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