As little as 15 years ago digital printing of textiles, compared with paper for the relatively benign office environment, no doubt looked like mission impossible. The demands of the textile application are extreme. Among them:

• more than a half dozen common types of synthetic and natural fibres, each with its own ink compatibility characteristics;
  
• dealing with a stretchable, flexible, often highly porous and textured surface;
  
• extreme use requirements including light, water fastness (sweat, too) through finishing operations and often outdoor use, heavy wear, abrasion, and cleaning;
  
• for some apparel applications, challenging registration requirements since separate pieces need to be assembled;
  
• not just sight, but also touch requirement;
  
• much greater absorbancy, requiring many times the ink volume compared with printing on papers.
  

In the face of such odds, digital textile printing is happening. The traditional valve jet machines are digital and have been around a long time, but they are appropriate primarily for large volume, centralized manufacturing. The newer digital printing technologies open things up for a wide variety of incremental applications. Tremendous progress has been made, but there are still many challenges. However, the opportunities for high-value digital printer applications are so large that many hardware and chemistry vendors are investing heavily in textile and textile-related products and systems.

It is still clearly new territory, but we’ve progressed beyond curiosity seekers, says I.T. Strategies. Printer and textile manufacturers know that this new opportunity is important to their companies. It’s a new frontier, it’s something like the old Wild West. Some of the energy is from the existing textile industry. Some from outside, like Colorlab, Ltd. That’s the color processor in Providence, RI, who decided to refocus his business entirely on fabric printing. Their new company name is Practical Imaging. (See detailed case below.)

Another thing new is the much wider variety of fabrics that can now be digitally printed: silks, polyester, car seats, cotton. Actually, now almost everything can be printed. It’s something like the development of digital presses. At first they required a narrow selection of closely controlled papers. Now they are much more flexible. Textiles is already going this way. But each of these materials has its own ink requirements.

And another problem is getting the ink to go through all the fiber. There are silk scarfs and car seats. And nonwovens such as Tyvek®--incredibly different requirements. Indeed, inks are a major frontier and a number of ink companies want to know more.

Other important issues include mass customization and how to deal with the reality that there need to be integrated solutions involving a sequence of operations such as pre-treating, printing, finishing, cutting and sewing. This poses a contradiction: digital printing opens the door for on-demand and decentralized manufacture. But how do you deal with these pre- and post-printing requirements in an office or other decentralized environment? One long-term market trend, for example, includes the movement of textiles and apparel manufacturing to SE Asia. Less than 5% of the world’s textile printing production was said to still be in North America. And there are some negative fashion trends, such as increasing preference toward single colors rather than printed patterns. Will digital printing offset or accommodate such trends?

Work notes, of course, that DuPont has pioneered pigmented colorants for ink jet inks, and cites many advantages. The importance of pigment inks in textiles was highlighted by his breakdown of the overall textile market showing that cotton is almost half the worldwide pie (Figure 2). Among the characteristics he mentioned on the textile industry supply side are that it's an old, conservative industry, it has been using 30-year old printing technology designed for long delivery times of long run orders, and is characterized by fierce competition which translates to oversupply and pricing pressure. On the demand side, the forces all seem to support the case for digital printing: increased importance of private label marketing, implementation of ever more sophisticated information technology, and demand for smaller lots, faster delivery, and exclusive designs. Besides meeting these demand side trends, digital printing was said to also offer integration of production into the digital work flow and impose much lower environmental costs.




Turning to specific inks and printing processes, BASF offers three alternatives. One product involves three steps plus printing: pre-treatment of the fabric for proper fixation of reactive inks, printing, heat (steam or bake) to bond the ink to the fabric, and, finally, wash-off. Their transfer inks require first printing on paper and then hot press transfer to the fabric. The third approach is a one-step direct printing ink which requires only printing onto the fabric and dry heat fixation.


Where?
Looking at the larger picture, I.T. Strategies analysts agreed the "where?" is a bigger unknown than the "how?"

Almost all digital textile printing requires pre-and post-processing of the substrate, and then converting, i.e. cutting patterns and sewing into the finished product. How can all this be done outside a plant, on a decentralized basis? Clearly there still needs to be a lot of development, especially if the emerging digital textile printing industry tries to mimic the traditional industry. But maybe thinking outside that box will change everything. A lot of the innovation will be coming from outside the traditional industry. It looks like almost everyone in wide format digital color printing could get into textiles. The traditional textile industry shouldn’t get too complacent.
There are clearly hurdles galore. But digital textile printing is obviously for real.

Two cases in point follow: one from within the industry and one among the digital printing industry.

Blumenthal Print Works, Inc.
The biggest digital imaging challenges facing the textile industry have yet to be completely ironed out. Obstacles include matching a fabric's hand (the tactile feel of the material) during the digital printing process to the production fabric's hand, and, for sampling purposes, development of digital inks that match the color gamuts of manufacturing equipment. In addition, inkjet printer output speeds are far too slow to make them practical for production runs, and this is the most critical problem.

But thanks to sophisticated textile design software and inkjet printing technology, large fabric suppliers such as New Orleans-based Blumenthal Print Works, Inc. are pressing forward with digital proofing systems and fabric sampling, and even exploring inkjet imaging technologies for final production runs. Blumenthal currently uses The Sophis Group's textile design software and 60-inch Encad inkjet printers to let customers preview colors and patterns before initiating production runs on its traditional rotary printing equipment. Sophis software also controls the jacquard looms in Blumenthal's weaving mill.

"The cost benefits of digital sampling have been enormous," says Camilla Franklin, Blumenthal's executive director of styling and product development. "We estimate that we made the purchase price of the printers back in two weeks due to the time saved over traditional sampling. The demand has been very high."

For more than a decade, The Sophis Group, a 20-year-old Belgian company with U.S. operations in Charlotte, N.C. and New York, has supplied its design and weaving software system to the textiles industry. In addition to its textile design features, the software can link to the loom itself, controlling how the device lifts threads and shifts the yarn. Sophis officials predict that digital printing will eventually eliminate textile manufacturers' resistance to short-run orders. This is because thanks to digital print technology, short runs will actually become easier to handle than longer runs. In turn, digital printing will drastically reduce the number of rotary printer screens that textile companies need to produce, as well as enhance design variation and complexity. During customer visits, small fabric samples will be whipped off of the printer in a matter of minutes, and "rapid prototyping" of colorways will accelerate the process from design to manufacture, according to Sophis.

Despite this rosy outlook, for high-volume production, advances still need to be made in ink technology and printer output speeds before ink jet printing becomes feasible for production runs, says Blumenthal's Franklin. Rotary machines can print tens of yards of fabric per minute, compared to a digital printer's output of several yards per hour. But Blumenthal has fully integrated Sophis software and ink jet printers into the fabric sampling process. The company currently samples about 25 yards of fabric per day on its printers, in lengths ranging from a yard to 30 yards.

A Long History in Fabrics Printing
Blumenthal Print Works is no newcomer to textile printing, having been importing and printing fabrics for most of this century, beginning in 1924, when the Blumenthal family began importing cotton materials from Belgium. The company printed and distributed its fabrics domestically and exported them overseas. In 1976, Blumenthal bought its own jacquard weaving mill in New Orleans to begin producing cotton fabric for use in mattress ticking and furniture upholstery. Although company headquarters remain in New Orleans, Blumenthal has moved its printing and weaving operations to Marion, S.C.

Now employing 450 people, Blumenthal is one of the nation's three largest suppliers of fabric to big-name mattress manufacturers, including Sealy, Simmons, and Serta. In addition, furniture companies such as Corinthian, Kroehler, Klaussner, and La-Z-Boy use Blumenthal's fabrics, as do manufacturers of drapes, tablecloths, bedspreads and comforters.

Franklin brought her background in woven textile design and printing to Blumenthal several years ago to help implement and oversee operations of the Sophis textile design system. At the time, Blumenthal officials were in the process of re-engineering the company's entire printing process to make computer-aided design an integral part of the workflow. The Linux-based Sophis system runs on 10 Hewlett-Packard PCs at Blumenthal's New Orleans headquarters. Two people use the software to create fabric designs, and the other stations, linked via the company's intranet to the jacquard looms in S.C., handle weaving functions.

"Most textile companies have CAD systems now to assist with fabric design, but many are less sophisticated in that they don't link them to manufacturing. We use our CAD system for more of the process, including design, sampling, and production," says Franklin.

Initiating a digital sampling program was a natural extension of Blumenthal's decision to put the software to use in its manufacturing process. Traditional sampling requires a kind of giant silk-screen, a 40-foot long table upon which designs are applied to fabric. Five people can work on one sample, or "strike-off," for more than an entire day, making the process expensive and laborious. And even then, screens for the rotary printers in the mill need to be made for high-volume production printing.


Color Gamut for Digital Printing Still Relatively Limited
To supply inks for textile printing, Sophis has partnered with Ciba Specialty Chemicals, which has developed a limited number of fiber-reactive, disperse, and acid dyes for Encad and Mimaki printers. Despite the close collaboration between Sophis and Ciba, Franklin says the Encad dyes provide a closer gamut to Blumenthal's production colors.

Blumenthal PrintWorks, Inc.
905 South Broad Ave.
New Orleans, LA 70125
Tel: 504-822-4620
Fax: 504-822-2147

Other facilities: Jacquard weaving mill in Marion, SC
Year founded: 1924
Public or private: private
Number of employees: 450
Principal products: Ticking, Upholstery, Converter fabrics

But even these dyes offer only limited pastel colors. Still, Franklin has found that the Encad inks work best for Blumenthal's sampling purposes because they more closely match the color gamut produced by the rotary printing equipment. The digitally printed fabrics are not production runs, so this also eliminates the need for special treatments and steaming, both of which can change color quality and texture, as well as the hand of the fabrics, adds Franklin.

"The whole fabric character is changed by treating and steaming, and the sample feels nothing like a rotary-printed sample," says Franklin. "We would never want to produce samples that were different from the manufactured print. Because the fabrics are used for sampling purposes only, no post-treatment is really necessary to fix the dyes. We have made mistakes during our learning curve, but on the whole it's been very successful. The real breakthrough for the textile industry will be the advent of the same color gamut in digital that is produced by the rotary printers in the manufacturing process so that we can better match production.

In addition, matching on-screen colors from a CAD system to manufactured colors produced by the rotary printers can be tricky. Sometimes multiple tests are necessary to ensure that screen colors match production runs.

"It is critical that color standards are set up by those implementing the system to ensure accurate color printouts on the fabric using the specified dyestuffs on a day-to-day basis. This also should ensure good color matching between the monitor and the printed fabric, which helps speed the development of colorways. When purchasing a system, color-matching and ease-of-use, especially where color is concerned, should be closely evaluated before a decision is made. Experienced textile printers can use a system such as the one we have for in-house development of designs as part of a proofing process, but they must understand the differences that will occur between the digitally- printed fabric and rotary-printed fabric, and be able to compensate for these nuances by adjusting colors accordingly. We've found that by sampling on fabric we can get pretty close," says Franklin.

At Blumenthal and elsewhere in the textiles industry, digital print technology has established a toehold, but to become firmly entrenched as a legitimate production-run output device, fiber-reactive ink providers will have to broaden their offerings. Ciba and other companies are working on expanding their reactive-dye gamuts, and this can only further inkjet's penetration into the textiles market. Print speeds are another issue altogether. However, coupled with a wider selection of dyes, faster inkjet print speeds will surely propel the technology into a far greater number of textile businesses.


Practical Imaging, Inc.
Vivid ink jet imagery, a staple for advertising posters and billboards designed to stop people in their tracks, has failed to capture the creative fancy of many artists and designers seeking to put their designs on non-standard substrates, such as fabrics. Today, this is due, in part, to a lack of awareness and education. Additionally, tricky procedures -- ranging from surface treatments and precise dye formulation to steaming the final product to set the dyes, and then washing the fabric -- have slowed the progress of digital imaging on fabrics. But these considerations haven't stopped one enterprising startup, Providence, R.I.-based Practical Imaging, from launching its digital production of custom silk fashion accessories using ink jet printers.

Practical Imaging fuses its founders' expertise in digital photo processing and visual artistry with the silk-dye know-how of a California-based fabric importer and distributor. The result is a unique and viable textile printing operation that relies solely on ink jet technology and digital imagery to produce custom silk scarves and ties for sale at retail outlets such as department stores and boutiques.

The prime movers behind Practical Imaging are Uosis Juodvalkis, who recently sold his photo-processing business, and Jacquelyn Rice, a current ceramics professor and former Dean of Fine Arts at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the prestigious visual arts college also based in Providence. Because they have their roots in photography and painting, Juodvalkis and Rice say they have an edge over other companies already producing digital images on textiles. Much of the ink jet-printed fabric available today mimics traditional silk-screened graphics, while Practical Imaging plies the painterly capabilities of digital printing technology to produce subtle color gradations and nuances that aren't possible using screens.

"One key advantage we have is we've never silk-screened on fabric; we were never in that milieu," says Rice. "We're using the full capabilities of the ink jet technology and proving what it can do. When I saw fabric samples from ink jet manufacturers, they had terrible color quality and dull imagery, and I knew we had found our niche. There's plenty of low-end stuff like that available now. Soon people will begin to realize the advantages of ink jet, especially in the higher resolutions. Then, I think companies like Chanel are going to jump into this with both feet."

On the subject of their initial target market, Juodvalkis says that retail prices for ladies' scarves vary greatly. As little as six dollars will get you printed polyester scarves at vending carts in New York's Chinatown or Port Authority bus terminal. At the upper end of the market, silk scarves sold at specialty boutiques in trendy urban shopping areas can cost as much as $250. This high-end of the market is admittedly far smaller than the low-end, but Juodvalkis says this is where Practical Imaging can excel due to its use of high-quality dyes and ink jet printing.

Practical Imaging, Inc.
214 Cypress Street
Providence, RI 02906
Phone: 401-272-4577
Fax: 401-272-6662
Web site: Under construction
Year founded: 1998
Public or private: private company
Number of employees: 2 full-time employees
Principal products: silk scarves, silk and cotton custom yardage
Company landmarks--March 1999: First outside job for Pennsylvania Ballet

"We need to be inventive and produce in small quantities, and this is where we have an advantage using ink jet," says Juodvalkis. "We think there's a lucrative space in the commercial market. The exciting thing about this technology is that you can do things with it that you can't do with silk-screening. You can get full-color tonal gradations to produce subtleties between colors. You can also print one-of-a-kind designs. And not only is the feedback immediate when you print an image, you can easily modify it. Now, there is tremendous industrial interest in simulating silkscreen images, but we want to use exactly what the technology provides, not imitate silk-screens."

While Practical Imaging's scarves are not cheap at about $150 for a first copy, and $75 for small quantities, they are far less expensive than custom-ordered fabrics that have been silk-screened and shipped to the U.S. from exotic silk-dyeing businesses in Japan or Korea. A complex silk-screened design can require 20 different screenings, and the set-up fee alone could reach into the thousands of dollars. A customer would have to order hundreds of scarves to make a profit on the retail end. In contrast, Juodvalkis says using an ink jet printer, he can produce a complex pattern on a single silk scarf for about $50. That price covers the fabric itself, the production time and the dye. Clearly, Practical Imaging has grasped the holy grail that ink jet proponents have been preaching about for years: easily customizable printing and cost-effective short runs.

In The Beginning...
To get their new textile printing business off the ground, Juodvalkis and Rice began experimenting with an Encad NovaJet III 36-inch ink jet printer last year. At the same time, Rice had been involved with design work on a Macintosh using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, QuarkXpress and other software. During one textile design project, Rice realized that the ability to output digital designs directly to fabric did not exist. Since her designs originated digitally, it seemed oxymoronic to paint them on fabric using the traditional gouache technique. So her initial solution was to mount cotton fabric onto shelf paper, and run it through the ink jet printer to produce samples.
Rice adds that although Practical Imaging currently focuses on silk scarf production, thanks in part to a new 60-inch Encad ProE 60 they are beginning to print enough yardage to make clothing. They are also testing wool and cotton fabrics. "One advantage is that we can mount very small amounts of fabric. You also have to have knowledge of the hand of the fabric, the thread counts and the weave configurations, which all come in to play when you print. If you don't have good fabric you have nothing." After output, the fabric currently must be steamed to set the dye.

Rice says she's especially interested in botanical images, many of which she takes right out of her own garden. She'll toss a freshly picked flower right on the flatbed scanner and work with its digitized image. Because she's printing on a digital printer, she says she's not locked into creating repeated images, but can create a one-of-a-kind scarf or piece of clothing.


Beyond the Scarf Market
Even as they move into the heady realm of high-end fashion with their array of colorful silk scarves, Juodvalkis and Rice see other suitable markets for ink jet-printed fabrics: custom silk ties to be worn by a company's sales force at a trade show, or ties or scarves to be used as gifts for visitors to a company. The fabrics would be emblazoned with a colorful image and the company name. "This is a market space for runs of 25 to 100 pieces," says Juodvalkis. "Using traditional silk screening, the possibilities are much more limited -- only two or three colors are economically feasible -- using traditional silk-screening. If the customer wants a full-color image, there's no other option than ink jet."

Practical Imaging's location near the RISD campus makes it natural for the company to tap into the talent of artists right on its doorstep. In addition to printing Rice's designs, they would like to expose the local talent to the possibilities of the ink jet medium. Perhaps even bigger names in the art community would jump at the chance to broaden their prospective customer base by printing their images on scarves or other fabrics for display at galleries, says Juodvalkis. "As part of our fashion accessory business, we'd like to include the work of other artists in our collections. Artists don't want to learn the technical intricacies of the printer, but they might produce a fine-art design that can be printed on fabric by exploiting all the nuances of the digital process. The Chinese have been painting on silk for hundreds of years, and now we have a whole new way to do it."

In fact, Practical Imaging's digitally-printed fabrics have already made their dramatic debut onstage at the Pennsylvania Ballet Company in Philadelphia. Sandra Woodall, a San Francisco-based designer, created the images using Adobe Photoshop. Practical Imaging used its Encad printer to transfer Woodall's designs to the silk fabric, and the costumes were put to the test before a live audience in April.

"This technique has a lot of potential in theater," says Woodall. "I wanted to create organic images that weren't based on existing hand-painted designs, and this technique let me explore the process. I could create very complex patterns that, due to time and financial constraints, would have been impossible to do by hand-painting. And the color quality of the final images was excellent."

Problems Remain
Despite its strong points, ink jet technology still isn't perfect. Upon close inspection, individual dots in a 300-dpi image become visible. On the production side, fabric coatings, mounting, steaming and washing all take some time, and Juodvalkis says it would be nice to be able to avoid all that. The fashion industry isn't interested in producing clothing and accessories on stock fabrics, so users may need to custom-coat a small quantity of a particular fabric such as silk or exotic cotton or wool weave.

One major success factor will be Practical Imaging's ability to market its fabrics in such a way that customers realize what they're getting. These are unique images and fabrics that are produced digitally, but can resemble traditional screen-printed artwork. If they can pitch the product based on its individuality, Juodvalkis and Rice are sure they'll meet success.


Summary
Progress is evident in the emerging market for digital printing on textile. Proof includes developments that now allow digital printing on a great variety of textiles including cotton blends. Hundreds of digital printers, primarily ink jet, are now in use around the world for sampling, strike-off, and short run and "mass customization" jobs.

Mass customization is critical to this market. The industry consortium TC2 reports that their non-contact body measurement system is now commercial with orders received and many more expected. Such systems can be part of true mass customization. But new technology is needed to print, fix dyes, and cut as a single process. Digital printing is increasingly appropriate for textiles since it supports industry trends: integrated into a digital workflow, short runs, fast turnaround orders, and customization. Digital printing also imposes fewer environmental costs.

Progress is also evident in inks. According to DuPont, the worldwide market for textile chemicals is $22 billion, of which 36% is dyes and pigments. Pigmented inks, DuPont claims, are suitable for all fabrics. There are one-step, two-step, and three-step inks from BASF: (1) pre-treatment of the fabric, printing with reactive dye ink, heat to bond the ink to the fibers, and wash-off; (2) transfer printing, first printing on paper then hot press transfer to the fabric; and (3) a one-step ink which requires only dry heat fixation after printing.

Because of the many compatibility issues, most textile printing is part of a larger process including pre- and post-processing of the fabric and then cutting and sewing. One of the advantages of digital printing is decentralization. However, it is questionable how the other steps of manufacture can be handled in the decentralized environment.

Implementing digital printing effectively means rethinking the overall system. Therefore, digital textile printing applications are as likely to come from outside the industry than from inside the traditional industry.

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I.T. Strategies, Inc. is an established research and consultancy firm dedicated to serving companies in emerging digital printing markets. The company delivers intelligent data, analysis, strategy, and implementation practices to vendors in the digital printing industry around the world. From offices in Boston and Tokyo, I.T. Strategies conducts and delivers research data, offers interpretation and advice, identifies specific opportunities, and helps organizations implement these strategies to achieve effective solutions.