Testing Printing on Fabric

Nicholas Hellmuth May 2017

3.2 meter ATPColordisperse dye sublimation

Printer Evaluation

ATP Color disperse dye sublimationPRINTER EVALUATION 1

IntroductionThere are dozens of brands of inkjet printers for printing on textiles. There are many different kinds of ink chemistries for printing on fabrics:

• Disperse dye• Dye sublimation• Pigment• Reactive dye• Acid dye• UV-cured• Latex ink

About the only kind of ink, which is rarely used for textiles, is solvent ink.

We at FLAAR Reports inspect wide-format inkjet printers at digital print trade shows in Shanghai, Dubai, Istanbul, Johannesburg, and the USA. Our goal is to find the printers with good color, precise resolution, and printers which are engineered to last a long time. A print shop does not want a printer which breaks down, fails, or falls apart (especially if you can’t easily get spare replacement parts).

Since printing on textiles has been a growing fad for several years, FLAAR Reports is dedicating time and resources to find good brands and evaluate specific models. Maria Renee Ayau is the manager of textile ink, printer, curing, and workflow at FLAAR Reports. She will be doing the full evaluation of the 5-meter model, with comments by Hellmuth. The present report is by Dr. Nicholas.

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How do we learn which printers are reliable?First we listen and learn from people in the industry around the world. We attend printer trade shows literally around the world.

Second, we learn which printer manufacturing companies have a good history of producing reliable printers: Reggiani (now EFI Reggiani), MS, and ATPColor, are several of many brands with a good reputation for quality.

Next step is to visit the company headquarters, visit the demo room, and visit the factory. This we can do when the company flies us to their city and provides access. People pay attention to a FLAAR Report evaluation because they realize we are a re-search institute and not a commercial company.

Dr. Hellmuth evaluating the textile printer samples at ATP Color headquarters in Milano, Italy, on October 2012.

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Next step is to visit a print shop. It is essential to find out how a printer, ink, substrate, laminator, cutter, or RIP software works out in the real world. When in a print shop we prefer to speak with both the owner or manager, PLUS separately with the printer operator. The printer operator knows the reality.

We have visited ATPColor world headquarters several years ago and look forward to visiting them again now that they have the new 5 meter textile printer. But we wanted to get started so we did test prints during FESPA 2017 in Hamburg.

Test Printing During a trade showOne advantage for a print brand to use FLAAR images is that our photographs are unique. If you look at the hundreds of nice booths, you often see the same photos used for over 15 years!

On December 2012, Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth visited a sign shop that has several ATPColor textile printers in Germany.

Since booth personnel are busy, we fully realize and understand that printing during an expo is either not realistic, or it is sim-ply more comfortable for the brand to print back home in their own demo room. We will have a FLAAR Report on Mimaki UV-curing prints from the European demo room of Mimaki.

But occasionally it is possible to print during an expo, and the benefits are that we can get the report out more quickly.

The nice thing about printing on a fabric is that it will not crease; it will not easily get dinged.

If you print on PVC vinyl, on paper, and on most other normal signage materials, they get dings the minute you pick them up to look more closely at them.

Textiles can be picked up, folded, stuffed into my suitcase, flown back to my office, and then held up to do photography of the results: no dings, no creases (if you use the right material, as did the personnel in the ATPColor booth.

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This is a substantial amount of test prints. But to evaluate print quality it helps to have such a range of colors.

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You can see, even at this angle, that the quality of the printed image is excellent.

Keep in mind that this 3.2 meter long, circa 1 meter high image is of a 7th-

9th century Maya-related ceramic vase which is only about 20 cm high:

enlarged here to an entire meter.

The image shows a feline. Since there are no spots it could be a puma (cougar,

mountain lion). Both pumas and jaguars are common in Mexico and

Central America.

These are digital “rollouts” using a Better Light rollout system courtesy of Michael

Collette. The cylindrical vase is on a turntable on a tripod connected to a

computer; the tri-linear camera sensor is connected to the same computer. The

Better Light software turns the turntable one pixel; the camera takes a vertical

image of one pixel width the full height of the vase. I usually take about 29,000 photos (so 29,000 pixels) of each vase.

Rather impressive technology.

The reason FLAAR is so deep into printers for over 18 years is because already by late 1990’s we had huge

digital images: 200 to 400 MB already back then.

This is a view of over three meters of the image.

A great advantage of printing on fabric is that when rolling it out on the floor it makes no difference if the print is not laid flat: textile does not get “bend marks” (dings).

Encad gave us a 36” printer to evaluate and that was the start of the FLAAR Reports on printers, inks, workflow, etc. Our first subject was print-ing fine art photos and giclee (art reproductions). Then we moved into UV and then into textile printers.

All vases shown here are from the Museo Popol Vuh, UFM, Guatemala City. FLAAR had a research center at this uni-versity for about five years and had done research in this museum several years before the visiting research professor years.

ATP Color disperse dye sublimationPRINTER EVALUATION 6

Since these prints were such a nice healthy size, in order to show their full size, we took them outside our office (to the driveway) and set up two ladders, so people are holding each end with additional people in the middle.

Textile printers tend to produce the best colors when you give

the printer a graphic design produced by a designer who

knows which colors work best with textile inks.

Many textile printers do not reproduce photographs very

well at all.

For these reasons we prefer to use photographs for test prints,

because these are the hardest to render with accurate colors.

As both a Harvard and also Yale University trained archaeologist

and art historian during the 1960’s through 1980’s, I can say that the colors of these

8th century works are art are perfectly reproduced by the

ATPColor inks and sublimation technology.

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All these prints will be donated to the Museo Popol Vuh, Universidad Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala City.

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This ceramic artifact is about half a meter high. These were used either as an incense burner, as a cache vessel, or as a burial urn. This dates from the 6th to 9th century. If from Peten it would be early; urns from the Highlands were later than incensarios or cache vessels from the Lowlands.

Museo Popol Vuh, UFM, Guatemala City.

Notice how the image stands out from the background. This is a result of the style of

studio lighting which FLAAR has specialized in for over 40 years. A professional

photographer would use a totally different style, since he or she is a “photographer.”

We in distinction wish to reveal the detail of the 8th century deity, in this case God N

(known for having a snail shell or conch shell associated with his body).

All these prints we will donate to the Museo Popol Vuh, Universidad Francisco

Marroquin, Guatemala City. These photos were taken about 20 years ago.

Since we dedicated so much time to get a good photograph of this vase, we would

not want to print it on some low-bid printer. So we appreciate ATPColor team for

printing these during FESPA 2017.

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Maria Renee Ayau is the manager of textile printer, textile ink, and textile

inkjet workflow evaluations. Here she is in front of the 3.2 m ATPColor

textile printer. Roberto Martellono is outside the corner of the booth

talking with Pablo M. Lee (ink, media, and cutter evaluation manager at

FLAAR Reports).

Pablo and Maria preparing to do a video of the owner of ATPColor textile printer company.

FLAAR does videos of companies who fly us to their factories to evaluate their technical capabilities. We do initial videos at the trade shows, since it may be a month before we can

coordinate the actual visit.

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The nice thing about prints on textiles is that they can be easily folded.

If this had been a print on PVC vinyl, it would have required a 3.2 meters high roll to transport it. And you can’t fold traditional signage material. Actually if the print gets a ding it can be so scarred that it is undesirable.

My folding this into a convenient size it was possible to fit this into my suitcase and fly it back to Guatemala.

AcknowledgementsWe thank Giancarlo Zocchi for doing the printing. We appreciate the hospitality of Giancarlo, Roberto Martellono, and his wife.

In the future we will focus on the new 5m printer, as this is the only five-meter textile printer with curing built-in. The studies of the 5m printer will be in the ATPColor demo room or comparable location.

Contacts:

Roberto Martellono, Managing Director

www.ATPColor.it