How Digital is changing the How & the What of Textile Printing

How Digital is changing the How & the What of Textile Printing – What Kornit is doing differently.

A continuation of the previous blog post interview with Merav Zimmerman, Product Marketing Manager of the Kornit Direct-to-Fabric printer, the Allegro.

What is Kornit doing differently?

From Kornit’s perspective, a 5 step digital printing means that are still 4 steps too many and Kornit takes digital printing forward to
condense the process into 1 step only eliminating both pre and post treatments.  This literally means a one-machine, one-step process solution for digital direct to fabric printing.
Kornit’s direct to fabric printer, the Allegro, provides this one-machine one-step process solution.

 What was the technological leap to make this possible?

Kornit has developed its own proprietary technologies to change the process entirely –  

Waterbased ecofriendly and sustainable pigment inks called NeoPigment™ inks were developed in house at Kornit.   A process called FOF
was developed to fix these pigment inks to the fabric. It stands for Fixation on the Fly and is the core technology that eliminates any pre-treatments. Fixation
on the Fly literally means that the pigment inks are ink-jetted onto  the fabric during the actual printing
process. A huge advantage of the FOF process is that pretreatment is applied only on areas that require it and thus handfeel isn’t compromised.

What is the significance?

It’s significance is several fold, in terms of human resources, time, flexibility which all impact on manufacturing costs.

Human resources are saved, for example when the operator doesn’t need to worry about pre-treatments, and can simply manage the actual printing process only which is centralized on one printer. Also one printer can be used to print on multiple fabric types, and the ease of the process makes it
much more cost effective – being a roll-to-roll process without any pre-treatment means that price for 1m of printing vs 1000 m will cost the same
per meter. With the eliminated external process steps, you can process PFP (Prepared-For-Print) to finished digitally printed fabric in just minutes. So,
it shrinks the whole supply chain compared to traditional methods and condenses the entire process.

This will further impact on the scalability and flexibility
we talked about earlier, breaking down barriers even further. Imagine if all the inventory your printing business required was several rolls of white
fabric. Nothing would ever go to waste and you’d never be stuck with inventories.

What about business opportunities with the Allegro?

The Allegro is a small  industrial roll to roll printer that can serve multiple business models for a large variety of applications using only 1 machine and 1 operator: home textile, garment, swimwear, shoes, sportswear and
more.

It can handle any quantities and deliver them at speed on the one hand, but also support manufacturing of limited editions and personalization which in itself opens new windows of opportunity for businesses.

It a printer that provides solutions for fast fashion and short supply chain demands – either for online business and web2print requirements.

Is there any compromise on quality/output with the Kornit Allegro?

The
Allegro prints textiles with the widest color gamut in the industry, giving excellent results.  And now for the first time, Kornit introduces Neon colors on multiple fabric types – providing a much
wider application that before. It’s Kornit’s newest edition to the Neopigrment Intenso family for the Allegro, introducing a Neon that behaves with
pigment-like properties.

Kornit’s Neopigment Neon for the Allegro roll to roll printer is making its debut atSGIA. Kornit continues with its innovative approach to bring new solutions to the market and Neon which was previously only available on polyester for digital is now available on the Allegro on multiple fabric types. It’s great that Kornit is able to continue to be a first to innovate– the first to eliminate pre-treatments,  to create softest pigments , great hand-feel, vivid and bright, rich and saturated colors. Learn more about Kornit Neon inks at https://www.kornit.com/k-solution/new-neopigment-intenso-neon-inks/

About

The Allegro

With only 6 minutes from file to finished fabric, and a 100% sustainable process, the Kornit Allegro roll to roll printer is the fastest, most cost effective way to start printing on textile. The Allegro system prints on multiple fabric types with just one digital printer and one NeoPigment™ ink set, Kornit’s innovative and waterless pigment ink printing solution. Our
patented Fixation on the Fly (FOF) means fixation fluids are inkjetted through the print heads directly onto the fabric. As a result, all additional steps such as
pre- and post-treatment are eliminated. Optimize your workflow and answer the call of your customer, the market, and the environment with the superior
efficiency of the Allegro roll to roll fabric digital printing machine. Learn more at https://www.kornit.com/k-solution/allegro/

About
– NEOPIGMENT INTENSO – Direct-to-Fabric Inks

Our water-based NeoPigment™ roll-to-roll inks are absolutely free of heavy metals, formaldehyde and
Alkylphenol Ethoxylates (APE), making them non-hazardous, non-toxic and 100% biodegradable. Designed to provide the most ecological and sensible solution to digital textile printing, you can print on the widest variety of fabric types with one ink set and experience excellent results time and time again.

Hear what Spoonflower, a Kornit Allegro customer has to say …