Analog Alive and Ticking!

The introduction of digital technology to the garment decoration industry has made a significant impact over the last ten or more years.

The methods are numerous and well documented, but what about hybrid technology?

First of all what is it?
Hybrid uses the attributes of continuous high volume screen printing with the quality and simplicity of digital printing.

Why is it here?
It promises to bridge the gap between the analogue world that has proven itself to be capable of producing large volumes of repeatable decoration and the unique high quality of direct to garment printing.

Each of these processes has restrictions and hybrid technology promises to take the best attributes from each process and meld them together to form a greatly improved solution.

Should we just stop buying behemoth printing machines with the ability to print 26 colors and flash each one? Some of these monster sized machines can reach more than fifteen meters in length.

Should we just refine all future purchases to be four color presses?
Analog screen printing has evolved into a highly efficient method of decoration (when everything goes well!!) and the flexibility this offers allows us to print intricate designs with special effects that can only be achieved using this method, Foil, Glitter, expanding ink and the full range of tactile prints are almost exclusively analogue.

Digital printing has opened up huge possibilities for mass customization, we can print a full color photographic design at 1440dpi resolution onto a black hoody in under ten minutes and with very little downtime, something which was not even imagined a few years ago.

We have all experienced the Friday night in the pub when you are introduced as the guy who prints t shirts and at least two people say “ oh can you put this on a shirt for my mate/uncle/mum/dad/dog/lover?. You grimace as they show you a low resolution gif on their phone of a dubious looking pug sat on the toilet, which they insist is the funniest thing they have ever seen. As you try to explain the intricacies of creating screens and applying color correction or heaven forbid mention the word separations its quite possible to pinpoint the exact time the eyes glaze over and the brain switches to standby.

Analog printing has limitations, it uses images that need to be separated into screens, one for each color. Each screen has an economic value, it requires ingredients and it costs labour. A really efficient stencil department that has invested in all the latest pre press equipment can reduce this cost to anywhere in the region of $3.50 to $6.48 per screen. The limitation also lies in the number of heads on your behemoth machine, the average UK machine is a 10/12. This gives us 7 workable colors on dark shirts after we lose one for the base, one for the flash and one to cool the ink after we flashed it.d

Digital printing has limitations too. It has a higher cost per print on dark shirts than most screen-prints. Sometimes 4x the ink cost than traditional screen printing. Time is another major factor in producing DTG prints with pieces per hour being a hugely important factor in any print operation, Digital printing is not yet capable of matching analogue screen print. When it comes to DTF, although this is a unique and easy way to decorate a tshirt, it still does not compare in quality to screen printing. Quite simply put, if digital was faster than analogue it would have replaced it by now and damn the cost.

So why hybrid?

The theory behind the introduction of hybrid technology in our field is the same as every other field that hybrid technology is found “ bring together two technologies and harness the best from both” but what if we collide these two technologies and end up highlighting the worst parts of each process? The slow speed of digital with the high investment and high skill level of traditional screen print would never work and we must be careful that, as the industry rushes to fill the new promised Valhalla of instant print on demand, we do not make the task more complicated and more expensive.

White

White ink is the Achilles heel of both techniques, but it seems that analogue has the jump. Screen print can lay down a good solid white base coat on the most complicated and complex of substrates. Multiple screens in series will reduce print times to under ten seconds and can make this first down white seem optically bright and the cost is not prohibitive.

A liter of digital white will require you to mortgage your house, promise the hand of your firstborn and sign away all future record deals you may have! The ink must contain Titanium Dioxide to make it white which is expensive and difficult to pass through a print head and store in a tube inside a print machine. There are many solutions to the ink settling issue, recirculation systems appear to have solved this. Almost every DTG and DTF machine applies white through its own dedicated head with multiple outlet channels. This method can add to the process time as the white and color can not be applied at the same time.

Solutions

This technology is moving very rapidly but the accepted method right now appears to be:

• apply a base white coat using the fastest and most economical method; Screen print
• move this fresh opaque white to a digital head to apply the CMYK : Digital
• apply a top sealing coat to aid adhesion and handle: Screen print

To achieve this, we need to purchase both machines! A chassis of a screen print machine to print the white consistently and move it to the next stage. A digital print head to apply the CMYK inks onto the new white under-base.

We gain the speed of screen print, we lose the pretreat process as screen print ink can stick to a shirt without the aid of a separately applied binder.

We gain the high resolution of digital CMYK ink applied using printhead technology.

We still require a small amount of skill to set and adjust the parameters of a good base white print, we need reliable registration and high production speeds. CTS can help dramatically with this, so can digital registration adjustment.

There are lots of options on the market right now, with some being in the market for multiple years and some just entering. The most expensive machines utilize large (or multiple small) print heads to reduce printing time, the least expensive machines offer an optional digital head attachment that sits on an existing print machine at the cost of a print station.

Hybrid machines will not replace screen print presses and they will not replace the DTG machines on the market now. They will compliment an existing operation. Hybrid is not suitable for one off production runs no matter how adorable the Pug!. It can produce stunning results on the 50 to 1000 piece market. Below 50 its not worth making the screen(s) over 1000 pieces the price tends to drop so we get closer to the optimum for analogue.

The end game:

When the ink companies can find a white ink that can be printed onto a shirt with one screen, when the print heads are large (and affordable) enough to cover that white in one pass, when this whole process can be applied to any substrate, then we might have the solution we are looking for. Once this machine is introduced I will be retired and no longer need to tell the guy in the pub that his dog is ugly and has no place on a t-shirt!

Article written by Tony Palmer, Palmprint
Tony has more than 30 years experience in garment decoration ranging from manual screen printing on hand carousels to the operation of multi-color automatic presses.  Specifically Tony is an expert on MHM Automatics, Tesoma, Exile Spyder, Douthitt CTS, Zentner, and numerous manufacturers of textile decorating equipment. 

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