Wide textiles up to 3.2 or even 3.4 meters have always been in demand in the home furnishings sector. In the past, materials of a 1.50-metre width were most frequently utilized in the fashion industry. But more and more printers are now able to create clothing with widths up to 1.85 meters. This is a logical outcome of the population's increase in height.
When the fabric is considered a large format?
When a fabric is more than one metre wide, it is referred to as "big format" in the textile industry. This indicates that practically all printed fabrics in the textile business are large format fabrics. After all, they are typically 1.50 meters broad.
Silk is the smallest material that may be printed on and is often no wider than 90 cm. Viscose, which normally starts at 1.10 meters wide, is the second-smallest fabric that can be printed on. Since people have been growing taller over the past few years, cotton, the most popular fabric in the fashion business, has been made wider. The majority of cotton is distributed on rolls of cloth with lengths between 1.50 and 1.85 meters.
The home furnishings business is one where fabric widths are greater than these figures. In this business, 2.20, 2.40, 2.80, 3.20, and 3.40 meters are typical widths. Overall, this indicates that there is a significant need for big format fabric printers in the textile industries for both fashion and home furnishings.
Three Factors –
Scalability
It goes without saying that the printer you choose to buy must have enough width to fit the widest width of fabric you intend to print. There is no need to purchase a printer wider than 1.85 m if you never print on fabric wider than 1.85 m.
When examining scanning printers, a common query is whether the heads always move across the entire width of the blanket (regardless of the width of the fabric). This was frequently the case with older printers because the heads required cleaning nearly every run. The cleaning was done adjacent to the blanket on the left or right side.
The Voyager digital textile printer, for example, is a multi-pass printer that prints only above the fabric. Because of the used Technology, including the special print heads and dedicated ink, it reduces the need for cleaning to the absolute minimum.
Quantities
The amount of large format fabric you need to print will also affect the printer you choose. One multi-pass scanning device should be adequate if you need to print fewer than 1 million meters annually. If your usage exceeds that threshold, you can either choose to purchase more scanning equipment or a single-pass printer.
The degree of flexibility you require is the main differentiator in this situation. A single-pass printer is the greatest option because it has the highest capacity if you only print on a small number of fabrics, such as cotton/viscose blends. Over 10 million meters can be printed annually by a single-pass printer.
This even provides you with the freedom to employ one machine for reactive purposes and the other for dispersion purposes. This allows you to print on polyester materials using dispersion in addition to reactive printing on natural fabrics.
Costs
You must think about how much you are willing to spend on a large format fabric printer in addition to scalability and quantity. The pricing of scanning devices above single pass devices is their principal benefit.