Mexar completes development of t-shirt printing market

31 Mar '10

3 min read

Mexar Ltd have announced the release of their latest generation of water based pigment inks for inkjet printing direct to textiles. This is the latest development from the UK based independent inkjet ink manufacturer.

Technical Director Dr. Andy Hancock explains the new technology: “At Mexar we have been working hard on delivering an inkjet ink which is water based, pigmented and has great wash fastness to a variety of fabrics. We feel we have achieved this with the textile inks we offer the market. Our development started with the t-shirt printing market but is now moving forward into wide format areas. At Mexar we took this market quite seriously. We looked at the problems associated with the current inks for this t-shirt printing market and tried to address these directly. The products we offer have advantages over the competition in the marketplace and sales are rapidly increasing around the world. Our latest research has been targeted towards the wide format industry to try and increase volumes of ink we produce and sell”.

Direct to garment printing
The direct to garment printing market emerged about 6 years ago with the first DTG printers being launched for CMYK printing to white fabrics such as white t-shirts. Soon after launch, the OEMs realised the need for a white ink to print directly to black and dark coloured garments. At Mexar we looked at the problems associated with the current white inks and addressed these directly. DTG white ink has a few fundamental issues which we have tried to eliminate with our latest white ink formulation. Mexar have significantly reduced the settling issue of dense TiO2 in our formulations and built in a lot of flexibility to the cured inks.Our wash fastness outperforms the competition and also the printability of our white ink is much better compared to other inks. Machines can be left idle for a few days at a time without any damage to the printhead. This is a step forward in white ink technology for textile printing explains Hancock.

With the CMYK inks, we have worked hard to deliver a vibrant colour set with better wash fastness than the competing inks. We listened to our customers needs and realised that inkjet pigment printing was not performing to customers expectations in terms of the wash fastness and colour gamut, so worked on these aspects.

Pre-treatments
Whilst we have developed our CMYK inks so that they do not require pre-treatments to many fabrics, we have also developed a number of pre-treatments to increase functionality to the printed inks.
We have 4 pre-treatments available.
1.) For printing white ink to dark fabrics
2.) For printing white ink to light fabrics
3.) For printing CMYK ink to light fabrics (for color boosting)
4.) For printing to light polyester fabrics

Wide format Printing
Now that Mexar have completed the development of the t-shirt printing market, their focus is now concentrated on the wide format printing market. “We have recently seen BASF pull out of the digital inks market place” Says Roger Tirrell, commercial director of Mexar. “This has left a number of users around the world looking for a new supply of ink. We have started to convert a few users over to our new wide format inks and results are looking promising”.

Mexar Ltd

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