Kornit Digital aims at driving transformation of textile printing

Textile printing, according to Kornit Digital, is now at the same stage where print on paper was 25 years ago: predominantly analog, but on the brink of a digital transformation. The company has been working for most of those years to develop direct-to-garment and direct-to-fabric systems that can satisfy what it says is a rising on-demand market for digitally printed wearables and furnishings in custom-printed short runs. Kornit Digital aspires to replace screen printing as the method of choice for applications like these, and at drupa, it will showcase a range of digital solutions for textile printing with quality meeting or exceeding that of the conventional process. The centerpiece will be Apollo, a high-speed, a highly automated inkjet press that Kornit calls a breakthrough for the kind of short-run production that can be impractical on analog screen equipment.

Kornit Digital announces that the high quality of Apollo’s printing comes from the thin layer of pigmented ink the device applies to cotton, polyester, cotton-polyester blends, Lycra, rayon, silk, leather, denim, linen, and wool. Claimed production output is 400 shirts per hour in an automated workflow that a single operator can oversee. The production sequence includes garment scanning, semi-automatic loading, automatic unloading, and smart curing. Users of Apollo can acquire the device under an all-inclusive click charge model that requires no up-front capital investment.