Fabric Printing types

Understanding Digital Fabric Printing?

Simply put, digital textile publishing is the work of printing electronic data onto fabric, with all the publishing area of the process working just like your desktop inkjet printer. Just, think larger and where the printing element is only one section of a bigger process.

There are a number of various kinds of Digital Fabric Printing Ink Technologies. Each works on particular textile types being ideal to particular reasons and offering different characteristics of printing. The sort of material publishing will influence the cost and longevity of the imprinted design.

An easy demonstration of this is the difference between a T-shirt with a waxy quality towards the print design, where the printing successfully sits over the fabric compared to those where you can feel no difference between the textile whether it’s printed on or not, and variants among these.

This diagram demonstrates the 4 basic ink technologies/chemistry's in addition to textiles that they're able to print on. For reasons for this post we intend to talk about Reactive Dye Digital Fabric Printing as this is really what we utilize at BeFab Be Creative.

Reactive Dye Digital Printing is the most functional for the deluxe digital publishing technologies, using its capacity to print onto both silks and plant based products (eg cotton, linen and bamboo) and in which the print does not have any influence on the handle of fabric because the dye bonds straight with all the material fibres. And also this implies that reactive printing features a larger light and wipe fastness than many other print technologies making it ideal for clothing and residence ware.

Exactly what should you know before you’re willing to print?

Colour: spend playtime with your design, it is possible to print as much colours as you like when utilizing electronic printing. It’s designed in order to achieve photo high quality detail so there should not be any constraint in the tints you employ, simply have fun!

Textiles: We're going to hardly ever suggest a fabric to use, with regards to many projects selecting fabric is largely a question of taste. We recommend you purchase a fabric test book so that you can see and feel the handle for the textile and in addition get an idea of how a comparable printing seems for each product. By way of example, we've developers that are printing silk scarves on every one of our silk choices; similarly all of our cottons and linens happen employed for clothes or curtains, together with thicker choices for residence ware therefore it really is totally your decision and final result you need to attain, plus deciding on your price and margins.

Cost: At BeFab we always keep things quick therefore we have actually a simple cost per meter without any additional extras. Though bear in mind, many printers run a Print + Fabric + Admin/file set up/additional print size an such like = Total price per meter, so the end cost it is really not always obvious to start with or as clear.

File requirements: generally these should be RGB, between 150 – 300 DPI, and spared as Jpegs in the proper scale and direction you wish that it is imprinted.

File positioning: the fabric runs down the height of file therefore the slice edges are top and bottom additionally the material salvage runs along the sides.

Repeat habits: we recommend you only upload the minimal repeat tile in the event that design/repeat is smooth at your end, it will be at ours!

Positioning prints: once the design is either comprised of varying elements or needs to be printed in a particular design, put your data while you would like them imprinted, and hold seam allowances in mind. If you require white area at either end always mark the boundaries in the beginning and end-point of the file therefore we know locations to cut the fabric in which this may not usually be apparent.

File design: If you are printing several squares of various styles, although electronic printing is made with several colours in mind, think logically where feasible, for those who have 3 light designs and 6 black colored ones lay these out making sure that lights are all together consecutively while the blacks are collectively in the place of mixing them all up. You'lln’t put a red top in with your whites together with same reasoning holds true in which possible into the electronic possessing and will possibly increase production, if not feasible after that that’s fine.

Sample: we can not worry to you personally enough the importance of sampling. It is necessary for several explanations, every printer is calibrated in a different way, we calibrated our printer so that it matches the Uncoated Pantones because closely possible, and this is always an excellent starting point. Nonetheless your design will appear different on the display screen as it's backlit unlike being on a matte or absolute material. We offer an example solution this is certainly 20cm by ½ the width for the fabric which we after that print two times, side-by-side, consequently we both keep a reference for any future images for reliability. You could get loads into this size of printing, therefore fool around with various saturations and always work to exactly the same scale and design that the print will undoubtedly be rather than isolating colour chips or scaling down a design as this make a difference your perception of colour.

Assuming you then have questions only ask, we’ll be happy to help you.

So how exactly does the printing procedure work?

Unlike with standard display screen publishing where in fact the dense ink ‘fixer’ is incorporated in to the ink it self, with digitally printing this fixer would block up a printers ink minds, so the fixer needs to be put on the material prior to it being printed. This can be described as the ‘padding’ or pre-treatment. This is accomplished by an external fabric finisher (which sounds confusing whenever in digital printing terms this is actually the very first part of the process!)