Solving the textile conundrum

When it comes to printing on materials and fabrics, you are presented as a sign-maker with a multitude of problems that you need to consider. Commercial printers have the luxury of only mainly printing on substrates that accept inks and the reaction of the printed material can be predicted and accommodated.

Unfortunately for the businesses sat on the periphery, printing on fabrics can be very achievable, but there are a large number of considerations prior to putting a single droplet of ink down. Some of the issues come to the type of fabric, thickness of the same, and the use of the finished product.

Luckily for those still holding strong and wishing to meet the client’s expectation, there is a company that just might have the equipment that can help. Mimaki, a Japanese company started in the 1970s, is rapidly developing a name for itself across the world as a supplier of very versatile fabric digital printing equipment. The keystone product from their range is the Tx300P-1800.

To the uneducated eye, the Tx300P-1800 probably looks very much like any other wide-format digital printing device. Roll feeder, inkjet head system, and products rolled up full of vibrant colour, you could be excused for passing by this printer and ticking off as “one of those”.



Should you be interested in printing on fabric, you would make this assumption at your peril. Mimaki have looked long and hard at not producing a product for a market, but looking wider at the requests that any fabric or sign printer is presented with and coming up with a solution to their problems. In my experience, if you come up with solution to printers’ problems, rather than present them a device they then need to find a need for market for, you can count on sales racking up quickly. Hybrid Services, the distributors for Mimaki in the UK and Ireland are experiencing this “solution provider outcome” first hand it appears.


The first thing that you need to consider when you lift the hood on this wide-format printer is the vast range of products that can be printed on it. As explained earlier, if you were to ask your average sign-maker to print on anything apart from vinyl and its variants, they will run a mile. Fabric and polymer printers have unique experience with understanding the vagaries of printing on all substrates from polyester, nylon, acetate, cotton, and hemp to leather, silk, and wool.



To help with the troubled fabric printers’ problem, Mimaki have firstly designed a printer that can handle different substrate thickness. The Tx300P-1800 has a very impressive media range from 1mm and under. By having this scope the printer can print on the large range of substrate required.

The range of media thickness can present other issues such as stock weight. Textiles and other substrates can be far denser than paper and as such heavier. To cope with this the x300P-1800 can handle roller weights up to 40kg. It is all well and good supporting weights of this magnitude, but you need to be able to feed the media into the printer and again out of it in a very precise and controlled manner. The finished dot quality can be greatly affected by poor substrate control.

The Tx300P-1800 has a series of turner bars, and drive rollers to control the substrate, to assist further the feeding and winding device uses a patented tension and rewind control system. The front tension bar monitors the ingoing substrate and senses the spending roller size and compensates accordingly. The rear turner bar system equalises the tension and helps to remove wrinkles in the printed textile.

So, we now have the substrate being precisely unwound, rewound, and held ready for the pouring of ink onto it. Unfortunately the poor fabric printers’ problems are not lessening.

Unlike paper or vinyl derived materials, the types of substrate can cause not only issues for our printer, but most types of media will only accept certain types of ink. But Mimaki have the solution; this very clever piece of equipment can handle all types of ink that would be required by any fabric or sign printer.

The Tx300P-1800 can deliver sublimation, acid, reactive, and disperse dyes along with specific textile pigments. All of the ink systems quoted come in CYMK with the exception of the sublimation dye, which can be used for direct printing with no transfer papers required.

Some of the ink systems can be in special colours such as the reactive dyes, which can be used for a vibrant gamut of colours and have good water resistance. The reactive dyes also have a good rub resistance and lightfastness making them very suitable for printing on cotton, hemp, silk, and rayon amongst other substrates.


Acid dyes can also come in colours such as blue and orange along with the CYMK ink set and this type of inking system makes the Tx300P-1800 suitable for printing on wool, leather, silk, and nylon. Vibrant and vivid colours can be easily laid down on these substrates.

For highest durability with the use of industrial textiles, disperse dyes can be applied in the CMYK set and red, grey, violet, and pink. Polyester, nylon, and acetate can have a wide range of colours applied to it via the Tx300P-1800. Closing on the list of inks and fabrics the Tx300P-1800 can print on is textile pigments. Cotton hemp and other home furnishing products can have complex and deep colouring applied to them on this product.

So, we clearly have a vast array of inks that can print on an equally impressive range of media, coming in large 2l containers that can switch when ink levels change. But, ink alone cannot give the solution. Again the Tx300P-1800 has more options to ensure the right image is delivered.

The TxLink3 Lite system is a RIP software package producing images and switching colours easily to ensure replacements can be dropped into the same image. Their colour replacement system can change the output from the device to match corporate colours adding further versatility. Add to this the scope of resolution from 360 to 1,440 dpi, this whole package makes for an impressive bundle of technology.

Looking at this piece of equipment with the ease-of-use and wide application, it might even convince dyed in the wool sign-makers to consider branching out.


Brian Sims Principal Consultant, Metis Print Consultancy, www.metis-uk.eu


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