SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016 - 35

feature

Over the past few years, an increase in
the use of polyester fabric has been evident
in the fashion printing market. Polyester,
and especially recycled polyester, is labeled
as 'greener,' even compared to cotton.
Fiber prices are down as well, although
polyester has gone up again since the oil
prices have stabilized.
Many people coming from the more
traditional printing side (reactive- or
acid-dye digital printing) have tried
digital disperse-dye printing and have
either succeeded with it or given up
completely. At the same time, other
companies have tried to come into the
polyester fashion market from the flagand-banner side, all trying to get a piece
of this rapidly growing market. Here,
too, one can observe stories of both
success and failure.
And it's true, printing with dispersedye inks may look much easier than
printing with reactive-dye inks. But
the fact that there are a large number
of people who are unable to do it shows
that, actually, it is not as easy as it looks.
So why is there so much failure in the
digital polyester fashion market?
There are many areas to consider when
doing digital printing for the fashion
market using disperse dyes:

1.
2.
3.
4.

Fabrics
Inks
Printing machinery
Auxiliary equipment for fixation
and washing
When changing from the regular
reactive-dye inkjet market to the dispersedye inkjet market, the fabrics themselves
are not that different. Of course it's a
different fiber type, but the constructions,
weight and size are fairly comparable to
their normal fabrics. But a producer who
normally operates in the flag-and-banner
market is commonly less knowledgeable
on those flexible, stretchy and lightweight
fashion fabrics.
Depending on which market the
producer originates from, there might
be a steep learning curve, especially on
fabrics and their total handling in the
complete workflow.
As for the inks, there is also a lot to say.
There is always the initial choice available
of disperse sublimation (transfer) inks, but
there are also disperse-direct inks available
in the market - and each type of ink has
its own specifics.
When the choice is made on the type of
ink, this usually also determines the choice
of machine type - maybe not of the type
of printhead, but of the type of infeed,

outfeed and need for a belt on the machine.
Still, this could be a low-, medium- or even
high-speed machine. Machine speeds for
textile-related equipment nowadays ranges
from a very low 10 linear meters per hour to
a whopping 4,000 linear meters per hour.
Then, once a specific machine with a
specific type of ink is running, you are also
in need of certain auxiliary equipment to
permanently fix the inks to the fabric.
Very common in the dye-sub sportswear
market is the use of dye-sublimation
calenders (transfer calenders). In the flagand-banner market it is very common to
handle fixation by means of a beltless fixation
system, comprising of a heated roller where
the fabric is guided around during fixation.
In traditional fashion-fabric printing,
it is most common to carry out a steaming
process using superheated steam; steaming
is used to allow the thickener to swell,
followed by washing (reductive clearing).
As mentioned, many different methods
are possible, and each method has its
positive and negative side-effects.
Let's zoom in on specific difficulties
that one can encounter,
when converting to
the digita l-disperse
printing market for
ladies' fashion.

By Rene Wolferink, Application Specialist, SPGPrints

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SGIA Journal ■ Spring 2016 | 33
SGIA Journal Garment Edition Spring 2016

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