The textile printing industry produces nearly twenty billion lineal meters of printed textile yearly. This printed textile represents a wholesale value approaching twenty billion dollars. Changing consumer fashion desires and economic pressures on the garment and textile printing industry are forcing textile printers into shorter production runs. Intense economic pressure and lack of differentiating technology within this industry is resulting in the migration of textile printing to non-domestic printers. The antiquated printing technologies currently in widespread use require precision machined screens and an exacting setup to produce acceptable output.
Screens represent hard automation for the printing industry.
A screen is required for each color in a print and all of the screens must be precisely aligned to ensure matching the colors in the print. This setup time can consume over one third of the production capacity of the printing machine when producing medium length print runs. The entire process of bringing a new textile design to market often can take several months. The potential benefits of on-demand textile printing are numerous. Conceptually, on-demand textile printing is very similar to printing a color image on paper with a color inkjet printer.