Meshtex printing services are pleased and excited to announce the installation of two new stunning bits of digital fabric printing equipment – the HP Stitch dye sublimation printer, and the Transmatic 7460 rotary heat press.
While we’ve been running our Mimaki digital textile pigment printers for a while now, offering digitally printed cottons and linens on the roll & by the metre, as well as offering fully manufactured printed products, such as tea towels, cushions, aprons & tote bags, we have felt for some time that we’ve been missing something – and that, is polyesters.
Please Note – any reference to lead times are a correct estimate at the time the article was published. Lead times are always estimated and never guaranteed, and for our current estimated lead times see: lead times & deadlines.
We saw a gap in the market for printing a wider range of polyester fabrics on the roll, and began to investigate the best equipment for the job, which lead to the purchase of these two pieces of equipment.
What this means, is that we’re now able to offer a diverse range of polyester fabrics on the roll, including some fantastic new fabrics, including poly linen blends, recycled fabrics, high quality linen look inherent FR fabrics, Vegan alternatives that even fabric experts would struggle to tell apart, and more, with an ever increasing range of polyesters currently being developed.
Why the HP Stitch?
When we began to look into what might be the best wide format dye sublimation printer to invest in, one printer that we kept coming back to, was the new HP Stitch.
The HP Stitch offers unparalleled colour matching, when it comes to dye sublimation printing, with it’s internal spectrophotometer – coupled with the significant experience of our studio team, this enables us to achieve much closer colour matching than would usually be possible with dye sublimation transfer printing.
With automatic printhead maintenance & other smart technology, we’re expecting downtime to be at a minimum, along with maintenance cost, and this translates into improved lead times and more competitive pricing.
By the way, want to know our pricing – we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, just email us for the price list.
With the Stitch, we can control the printer via smart phone, keeping an eye on production without production staff needing to be constantly standing in front of the printer, which is a great feature – and this also enables our service guys to keep an eye on our printer from off-site, which is handy if we need to phone them with an issue, as they can just jump onto the app to see what’s going on before scheduling a visit.
Why The Transmatic Rotary Heat Press?
We already had a wide format rotary heat press, an older work-horse machine that had done a great job for us, especially when it comes to finishing pigment printed textiles.
But for dye sublimation printing we were aware that if you want precise & repeatable results, you really need a top quality heat press, so we decided to upgrade the press.
After doing some research, we opted for the Transmatic rotary press, as it appeared to offer everything we need.
The level of automation and adjustability that this press offers, translates to consistent, repeatable results for our customers, which is the end result we were looking for.
Being an oil filled drum machine, this machine gives great temperature stability and consistency across the fabric, this, along with constant and consistent pressure, and being easily able to adjust dwell time, enables us not only to get the very best possible results, but to do so on a repeatable basis.
The larger drum size of this particular model, also means quicker production time, which we felt was worth the extra investment, given that every single improvement in production time helps to reduce our lead times.
This press has a scheduled turn on time, allowing us to setup a calendar to determine what time it should be ready for us to use each day.
It also has an auto off function, meaning that we can keep running fabric through the press right to the end of the working day, and the machine switches itself off once it reaches the desired temperature.
Rotary presses can’t simply be turned off at full temp, or the (very valuable) belt would become damaged.
Compared to a less able press, such as our old work-horse, these two features offer much improved productivity, meaning that the press is ready to use as soon as we open up in the morning, and that we can use it right up until the end of the day. This translates into more effective production, and therefore better lead times.
A couple of months on, and we’re very happy with the choice of printer and heat press.
We have produced many print trials, on an extensive range of different fabrics, from alternative silks and wool, through to linen look FR, heavy weight poly canvas, and fabrics made 100% from recycled plastic bottles, and in many cases the results have taken us by surprise, in a positive way!
We have now begun to carry out commission printing onto polyester by the metre, on the roll, for new and existing print customers, and we’re excited to see the range of interesting polyesters continually growing, with rumours of some intriguing new fabrics to be shown at Fespa in Madrid in March.
It is worth mentioning, that we use this new Transmatic heat press also for finishing our cottons and linens, so even if you’re not interested in polyesters, if you’re using our digital fabric printing services, you’re likely to benefit from this new purchase.
If you’re interested, either in digitally printed polyesters, or cottons & linens, just drop us an email, and we will reply with our price lists.
Don’t forget that we don’t only print, we offer a full range of professional pre-print services, such as full colour separation or minor adjustments to your existing artwork, and we’re always happy to quote prior to taking on any orders, so that you know your costs in advance.
It doesn’t stop there, either. After the fabric is printed, we offer a full CMT service, offering many popular finished products, such as cushions, tea towels, aprons, tot bags, oven gloves and many more. Just let us know if you’re interested in made up products, and we will also send you the finished products price list.