What is digital fabric printing?
Digital fabric printing is the process of applying coloured patterns and designs onto fabrics wherein the colours are applied in a sharply defined manner. Colours are affixed to the fibre in such a way that it may not get affected by washing and friction.
Digital fabric printing comprises printing digital files on the fabric, where the printing part of the process will most likely work like your desktop inkjet printer. The printing element is just one part of the larger process.
Digital fabric printing ink technologies are of different types. All these varied technologies work on their specific fabric types and are best suited to particular purposes alongside offering varying print qualities. Regarding fabric printing services, the type of fabric printing also determines your printed design’s price and longevity.
Take a waxy quality t-shirt, for example, when compared to the print design where the print effectively sits on top of the fabric, whereas in the other one, you can feel no difference in the material.
People mostly think that dying is the same as printing. However, that is usually not the case. Dying may be similar to printing but dying involves a uniformly covered portion of fabric with the colour, whereas printing involves printing repeated patterns all over or on a certain part of the fabric.
How does the process of digital fabric printing work?
Digital printing is different from traditional screen printing. You would require a thick ink fixer in traditional screen printing, incorporated into the ink itself. While in digital printing, this fixer would clog up a printer’s ink head; therefore, it has to be applied to the fabric before it is printed. This pre-process is referred to as the ‘padding’ or pre-treatment.
Next up, the new pre-treated fabric is then print tested, and the printer is gauged to the amount of ink that fabric can hold in order to achieve a crisp and prominent print. Too much or too little can affect the accuracy and brightness of the print. The average warpage is gauged. Then the fabric is given a profile which is used by the printer each time it prints this particular fabric.
The digital printing process starts right after that when your fabric is placed on the printer; the ink head is set to the right height for the fabric. The height will usually differ depending on the fabric. This is taken into consideration as it protects the ink heads and affects the crispness of the printing.