Entry-level Direct Textile Inkjet Printer
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Nagano, Japan (October 20, 2015)
Mimaki Engineering Co., Ltd., a global industry leader and manufacturer of wide-format inkjet printers and cutting plotters, announced today that it will launch the inkjet textile printer Tx300P-1800 in December 2015. The 1.8-m-wide roll-to-roll direct textile inkjet printer Tx300P-1800 is the successor to the Tx2-1600, which has been used for the last 14 years worldwide. This new printer product mainly targets designers or students who wish to instantly create designs for a sample or small-lot production.
In recent years, textile industry printing systems have been changing from conventional analog printing to plateless digital printing to meet market demand for high-mix low-volume print production capabilities and quick delivery. Accordingly, production settings are changing from remote areas to city areas closer to consumers. This trend is expected to accelerate over the next few years, with consumers being able to order their favorite designs via the internet with the ultimate capability of being able to reprint items as much as they require. Mimaki predicts that consumers will begin to regularly create custom designs once they have grown weary of ordinary design options in the marketplace. To accommodate such ultimate order-made printing, Mimaki will offer solutions to realize diverse printing needs.
Printer head gaps should be finely adjusted according to textile types, with a high head gap setting being needed to avoid contact with raised surface fibers. However, unskillful head adjustments or excessively high head gap settings degrade the accuracy of ink droplet placement, with associated print quality being affected. The new Tx300P-1800 employs a new printhead that ejects ink droplets at high speed to ensure accurate ink droplet placement with a high head gap, thereby providing high-quality printing results. Also, a stable textile transportation mechanism applies uniform tension on textiles to ensure stable printing at high-speed modes. Moreover, beautiful print results are achieved via the use of innovative inkjet technologies, and the print speed of the Tx300P-1800 is more than twice as fast as that of a conventional printer.*1 Sublimation dye, disperse dye, pigment, reactive dye, and acid dye inks*2 are provided to meet a wide range of customer application needs.
The entry-level direct textile inkjet printer “Tx300P-1800” consistently achieves high-quality direct printing via use of reliable machinery, printing processes, and ink techniques.
*1: Print speed is compared with DS-1800. Sb420 ink is used for measuring the speed of the Tx300P-1800.
*2: The following inks are available in the future: disperse dye, pigment, reactive dye, and acid dye.
◎Product outline
●New printhead allows printing on various types of textile
- While maintaining high-quality printing, high gap settings of the printhead allow printing on not only thick textiles but also various woven patterns or raised fiber surfaces.
●Reliable textile feeding mechanism
- Reliable and unique feeding mechanism including front and rear tension bars ensures stable textile transportation for providing quality printing.
●Mimaki’s print technologies for achieving beautiful printing
- Waveform control technique ensures beautiful print results.
- Mimaki Advanced Pass System 4 (MAPS4) reduces banding and uneven color printing.
●Uninterrupted printing solutions
- Nozzle Check Unit (NCU) automatically detects and cleans clogged nozzles. Nozzle Recovery System (NRS) uses only good nozzles as substitutes, when the clogged nozzles are not recovered after cleaning. These functions ensure constant printing performance and reduce printing waste due to defective nozzles.
- The standard-feature MBIS3 can utilize large volume ink packs (2 liters) for long-time continuous printing.
●A wide range of textile inks
- Mimaki offers five ink types—sublimation, dispersant, pigment, reactive, and acid—to meet various application needs. For providing affordable ink prices, inks are packed in large volume packs (2 liters) and can be installed to MBIS3.
●High-performance RIP software TxLink3 Lite
* TxLink3 Lite or RasterLink6 is bundled according to a user’s choice.
- The TxLink3 Lite offers simple RGB and CMYK color replacement on raster and vector data, as well as the ability to produce different color patterns.
- Various color replacement functions can represent desired colors.
◎Main features
1. The new printhead accepts various textile types
While printing on raised fiber surface textiles, a high head gap setting is required to prevent contact between the printhead and raised fibers. (FIG.1) In conventional models, such gap conditions reduce the accuracy of ink droplet placement. (FIG.2) The new TX300P-1800 employs a new printhead with a high head gap to ensure accurate ink droplet placement, thereby enabling high-quality printing on thin paper types. (FIG.3)
2. Reliable textile feeding mechanism ensures stable printing
Stable textile feeding and transportation is crucial for direct textile printing. Uniform tension is applied to a subject textile during a given printing job but can individually vary depending on the specific type of textile used, as well as due to other factors including feed/take-up roll outer diameter changes, ink usage amounts, and textile paths. Tx300P-1800 achieves stable textile transportation while maintaining an optimum tension owing to Mimaki’s unique and reliable techniques that are based on years of textile inkjet printer research and development.
① Feeding unit
② Rear tension bar
③ Front tension bar
Applied tension is changing during printing. Sensors monitor outer diameters of front and rear textile rollers and maintain the appropriate tension.
④ Rear turn bars
Bars equalize tension to prevent wrinkles on textile.
⑤ Drive roller
The shaft is rotating forward to apply tension uniformly.
⑥ Front turn bar
Maintaining the appropriate tension for stable textile take-up.
⑦ Take-up unit
3. Mimaki’s print technologies for achieving beautiful printing
1) Waveform control technique assures beautiful printing
Each ink color has its own specific gravity and viscosity. To achieve precise placement of the ink droplets onto the media, Mimaki designed an optimum waveform that allows the printhead to jet each ink color at the appropriate jetting angle without losing excellent ink droplet circularity even at the high head gap. Moreover, various ink droplet sizes are precisely placed from the minimum size 6pl to the maximum size 24pl.*4 Small droplets create beautiful high-resolution printing, and large droplets are very useful for high-speed printing. Thus, the Tx300P-1800 satisfies a wide range of needs including beautiful high-quality printing and productive high-speed printing.
*4: Minimum and maximum droplet sizes of Sb420 ink. Droplet sizes vary depending on each ink type.
2) MAPS4 delivers stable high-quality printing
Generally, swath boundaries are straight lines. Therefore, a slight misalignment between boundaries causes banding or uneven color printing. MAPS4 reduces banding and uneven color printing with blurred boundaries similar to gradation printing.
■MAPS4 applied
Banding and uneven color printing are reduced by scattering swath boundaries. Beautiful print image is obtained.
■No MAPS4
Bandings appear on swath boundaries. Print quality is remarkably degraded because banding is recognizable on each boundary.
4. Uninterrupted printing solutions
Ink and media shortage, clogged nozzles, and other minor problems influence stable productivity. The Tx300P-1800 fully supports continuous printing with reliable technologies.
1) NCU automatically detects and recovers clogged nozzles
Clogged nozzles are detected automatically by monitoring ink droplets with sensors. When clogged nozzles are located, these are automatically cleaned, reducing waste printing. Nozzles are checked per transfer file.
2) NRS for maintaining productivity
If the clogged nozzles are not recovered after cleaning through the NCU function, the NRS selects substitute nozzles and then restarts printing. This is a significant novelty, since previously, when nozzle cleaning fails, the printhead has to be repaired by a technician, and the printing operation ceases until the printhead is repaired. The NRS allows the printer to continue printing without interruption by using non-defective nozzles as substitutes for defective nozzles until the technician arrives.*5
*5: NRS may not be activated depending on print modes.
■ Figure 6：Illustration of NCU function
3) MBIS3 for long-time continuous printing
Large volume ink packs (2 liters) can be installed in the MBIS3; this enables long-time continuous printing and reduced operating costs.
5. Wealth of ink types:
Five ink types meet a range of application needs and textile types *6
| Ink type | Product name | Color | Features | Application | Applicable fabric | Note | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sublimation dye ink | Sb420 | Bl, M, Y, K, Lbl, Lm | Sublimation ink for direct printing. No transfer paper is required. | Soft signage | Polyester | |
| 2 | Disperse dye ink | Dd400 | C, M, Y, K, R, Gr, Violet, Pink | Inks are fixed by heating and have high durability. | Industrial textile Luxury apparel Home furnishing |
Polyester, nylon, acetate, and other fibers | Available in future |
| 3 | Textile pigment ink | TP400 | C, M, Y, K, Bl, R, Lk, Gr | Simple post-printing process. No steaming, washing and drying processes are required. Inks are fixed by only heating. | Home furnishing | Cotton, hemp, and other fibers | Available in future |
| 4 | Reactive dye ink | RC400 | C, M, Y, K, Bl, R, Or, Lk | Inks produce vibrant colors, reproduce a wide gamut of colors, and have water resistance, light-fastness, and rub-fastness because of dyestuff molecule bonding with the fibers. | Apparel Home furnishing |
Cotton, hemp, silk, rayon, and other fibers | Available in future |
| 5 | Acid dye ink | AC400 | C, M, Y, K, Bl, R, Or, Lk | Inks produce vivid and brilliant colors on animal fibers and synthetic protein fibers such as nylon. | Apparel Home furnishing |
Wool, leather, silk, nylon, and other fabrics | Available in future |
*6: Please select an ink type depending on your intended use. The ink type cannot be changed after installation.
6. High-performance RIP software TxLink3 Lite
1) Color replacement
Desired colors can be represented by specifying the ink volume of each ink color.
①Create desired colors
When the printed color differs from that expected, the color replacement function enables a user to specify the desired printing color as the target color. This function is useful for reproducing corporate colors.
②Easy to create different color data
With the TxLink3 Lite, colors are easily replaced on vector and raster data.
2) Step and repeat
Large seamless patterns can be produced from a single image, including repeat and mirror patterns.
3) Multicolor ICC profile creation
ICC profiles can be created simply to match a target color by following the wizard.
◎Specifications
| Tx300P-1800 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Printhead | On-demand piezo head （4 in-line printheads） | |
| Print resolution | 360 dpi, 540 dpi, 720 dpi, 1,080 dpi, 1,440 dpi | |
| Maximum print width | 1,920 mm (75.6 in) | |
| Maximum media width | 1,920 mm (75.6 in) | |
| Ink | Type/Color | Sublimation dye ink：Sb420（Bl, M, Y, K, Lbl, Lm） Disperse dye ink：Dd400（C, M, Y, K, R, Gr, Violet, Pink）*7 Textile pigment ink：TP400（C, M, Y, K, Bl, R, Lk, Gr）*7 Reactive dye ink：RC400（C, M, Y, K, Bl, R, Or, Lk）*7 Acid dye ink：AC400（C, M, Y, K, Bl, R, Or, Lk）*7 |
| Package size | 2L Ink pack | |
| Media thickness | 1.0 mm or less | |
| Rolled media weight | 40 kg (88 lb) or less Please note that the above maximum weight applies on a printed roll including ink weight. |
|
| Certifications | VCCI class A, FCC class A, ETL UL 60950-1, CE Marking (EMC, Low voltage, Machinery directive, and RoHS), CB, REACH, Energy Star, and RCM |
|
| Interface | USB 2.0 Hi-speed / Ethernet 1000BASE-T | |
| Power supply | Single-phase AC100 – 120V / AC200 – 240V | |
| Power consumption | （AC100V）1.44kW / （AC200V）1.92kW | |
| Operational environment | Temperature: 20 – 30 °C (68 – 86 °F) Humidity: 35 – 65% Rh (Non condensing) |
|
| Dimensions (W × D × H) | 3,200 x 965 x 1,857 mm (126 x 38 x 73 in ) | |
| Weight | 255 kg (562.2 lb) | |
Note: Data in the above specifications are subject to change without notice.
*7: The inks are available in future
◎Contact
Mimaki Engineering Co., Ltd.
Global Marketing Department
Postal code: 389-0512
Address: 2182-3 Otsu Shigeno Tomi, Nagano, Japan
Tel: +81-(0)268-64-2281, Fax: +81-(0)268-64-2285
Mimaki Singapore PTE.LTD.
31 Kaki Bukit Road 3, #02-03 Techlink, Singapore 417818
TEL: +65-6508-2789 / FAX: +65-6508-2780