Considering to enter the wonderful world of digital textile printing for your apparel range?
This is what you need to know and also what to be aware of.
Digital textile printing opens up and entire new world. Digital textile printing now limit to the amount of colour and the pattern repeat also has no limit.
Want to design a dress that requires a 150 cm repeat? No problem. Simply design your image or pattern using Photoshop, Illustrator or Corel Draw and send to print.
Dye sublimation is the most common form of textile printing as it is cost effective and very colour fast. Unfortunately dye sublimation only applies to synthetic fabrics like Polyester in most cases. You can also sublimate onto blended fabrics that has a polyester and cotton blend. The higher the polyester content, the better the print. The dye stuffs will only adhere to the polyester fibres. So if you dye sublimate onto a poly cotton blend of 80 % Polyester and 20% Cotton, you will get a 80% print result which usually quite acceptable.
We also offer printing on natural fabrics. So feel free to inquire about Reactive printing on cottons and linens.
The other advantage of digital printing is that you can do small 10 meters sample runs to do trials and samples.
The MAIN advantage is that you can design fabrics that is super exclusive and no other manufacture has access to your designs and patterns. This is a massive upper hand in the fashion industry.
Things to consider when doing digital textile printing
- You will need to have high res images to obtain a quality print. You cannot take small low resolution images off Pinterest and Google and expect it to translate to a quality print.
- Get a graphic designer to do it properly. Or ask your digital printer to assist you with designs and art work setup. This will result in a small fee but with great reward. Once your art work is set up, you can use the same art work over and over and no further setup fees will apply when printing that design again.
- Be realistic in your expectations. Keep in mind that colour perceived differently from PC to PC – from tablet to tablet – from Mac to PC. If you are going to run bulk, the it is advisable to order a small 5 meter sample run to test and see how your colours translated to fabric.
- Also know that shrinkage is part of the process. So always allow a few cm for shrinkage just in case.
- If you are going to design your own patterns and designs, always ask your printer what file format they prefer. Each file format will produce a different colour. CMYK and RGB can result in complete different colours..
Beyond Innovation has 14 year experience in Digital Textile Printing, so feel free to contact us
Beyond Innovation Printeriors
Guillaume Vermaak
The post Making use of Digital Textile Printing for your Apparel Range first appeared on Beyond Innovation.
