We all love the fabulous prints in our clothes these days. Be it any fabric – almost all of them have aced the printing department. Now the colors are bright as newly bought, the artwork remains intact and details remain the same for a long time. All thanks to the revolution in digital printing on fabric.
The history of textile printing in India traced back thousands of years ago when as per the ancient trends and skills textile design printing served as a significant symbol of cultural and financial power. In the late 1980s, as printing technology got advanced, colour inkjet printers became increasingly essential in the production of digital fabrics for the civilian marketplace.
In 1990, with the advancement in modern technology and the development of large inkjet printers, it all started with an exploratory approach. But such technology wasn’t regarded as the best equipment for fabrics because of the difficulty with light sensitivity to colours. Instead, it was acceptable for paper printing.
Throughout the times, technology kept expanding. Where several large organizations are now producing customized “digital textile printing machines” and in other words “digital printers” which can work with a range of substances involves paper sheets, rubbers, canvases and obviously fabrics.
Digital textile printing is described as any ink jet based method of printing colorants onto fabric. Most notably, digital textile printing is referred to when identifying either printing smaller designs onto garments (T-shirts, dresses, promotional wear; abbreviated as DTG, which stands for Direct to garment printing) and printing larger designs onto large format rolls of textile. The latter is a growing trend in visual communication, where advertisement and corporate branding is printed onto polyester media. Examples are: flags, banners, signs, retail graphics.
Types of printing can be divided into Direct Print, Discharge Print, Resist Print, Pigment Print, Reactive Print, Acid print, Disperse print & Specialty Print
Digital textile printing started in the late 1980s as a possible replacement for analog screen printing. With the development of a dye-sublimation printer in the early 1990s, it became possible to print with low energy sublimation inks and high energy disperse direct inks directly onto textile media, as opposed to print dye-sublimation inks on a transfer paper and, in a separate process using a heat press, transfer it to the fabric.
Check out GIFT for more such information on Indian textiles, fashion and retail business.
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