Visitors to the Stork Prints stand at ITMA Asia in Shanghai during June 12-16 were able to see how the company continues to lead the way as a total systems solutions provider for the textile printing industry. On display were the new digital textile printer Sphene as well as consumables like rotary screens and digital ink.
Stork Prints is one of the leading digital ink producers to the industry. It also builds and sells printing machines and RIP software. Besides the complete digital ink portfolio, the stall visitors witnessed live demonstrations of the brand new digital textile printer Sphene, which is the future for digital textile printing with print speeds of up to an amazing 555 m²/hr. It makes it amazingly easy, and cost-effective, to carry out top-class digital textile printing. Its industrial fabric feeding system allows virtually any fabric imaginable to be used, at widths of up to 1.85 metres.
There were also a plenty of printing samples of Stork Prints’ new NEBULA reactive, acid and disperse ink sets for Kyocera print heads. With the special Reactive Deep Black ink, you get a profoundly intense and dark black that really has to be seen to be believed.
Stork Prints also presented its complete range of FLARE inks that run on all printers using Epson print heads, including Robustelli Monna Lisa printers, underlining the fact that the unrivalled Stork Prints inks are not just suited for the new printer Sphene, but can also run on the Reggiani Renoir, MS JP and MS JPK-series printers and the La Meccanica Qualijet K-series.
Recently Stork Prints developed a dedicated range of inks, known as QUASAR, for the MS LaRio, for partner and leading Italian manufacturer MS. The suitability of QUASAR inks for the LaRio stems from Stork Prints’ considerable experience in developing inks for its own single-pass digital printing machines for label printing, the DSI. For a number of years the company has been optimising ink performance for high-speed digital printing machines to help deliver superior image quality. This includes patented technology to prevent striping.
Quasar ReAcid ink is already being used in the very first LaRio prototype, currently running at a customer site in Italy. Visitors to the Stork Prints stand could find out more about two new types of QUASAR ink – reactive and acid.
Visitors were also able to see much more in the way of printing innovation, including the unique NovaScreen rotary screens. These screens have a patented design which combines a high mesh count with minimum spacing between wider and ingeniously conical holes, so the maximum amount of paste is transferred to the substrate. This leads to higher print quality and also increases productivity and efficiency. For example, with a NovaScreen 195 mesh it becomes possible to print with the same quantity of pigment paste between 20-30% more meters as with a normal PentaScreen.
Two new screens
Users of Stork Prints rotary screen printing technology can also look to the future with confidence. For example, two new screens were introduced at ITMA 2011 in Barcelona. The Random screen (RM 125) is characterised by a random distribution of conical holes. This significantly reduces the moiré effect whilst printing, which means less need for trials and fewer remakes and rejects. It also offers more freedom in design possibilities, for example through its ability to produce realistic weaving and tweed effects.
Meanwhile, the new 195/19% NovaScreen distinguishes itself by combining high paste transfer rates with superb resolution. A patented design combines a high mesh count with minimum spacing between wider and ingeniously conical holes, so the maximum amount of paste is transferred to the substrate. It has been specially designed for printing fine halftones on voluminous substrates like single jersey, and also gives full penetration print on CV georgette or crepe articles.
Of course, both types of screen have the added advantage of the unrivalled Stork Prints quality and service support.
The company specialists were also on hand to demonstrate and explain about numerous examples of superior textiles and coated products, all made using Stork Prints screens and equipment. They demonstrated how the company is the only global partner that can offer solutions for every phase of the production process as well as consumables, including (digital) pre-press, printing and drying.
SmartLEX
Nowadays, the textile industry has increasing demands for high-quality pre-press and printing, but wants to decrease the complexity of production processes at the same time. Stork Prints has the perfect solution. As an exclusive at ITMA Asia, Stork Prints launched the brand new SmartLEX machine. This new direct laser exposing system, containing Stork Prints’ blue-ray technology, combines perfect imaging quality with an unmatched ease of use. Anyone who is capable of using a smartphone can make perfectly imaged screens.
The machine has intuitive design and is operated via a very user-friendly oversized touch screen. Perfect engraving of halftones or geometric designs is literally only a few button touches away. Based on design and screen type, the intelligent software chooses the optimal process settings fully automatically. This also ensures, especially in combination with Stork Prints screens, an unmatched reproducibility.
Thanks to Stork Prints’ 30 years of experience in laser engraving, the machine ensures extreme high productivity and utmost reliability, with a rapid return on investment. The TCO per engraved screen is very competitive. The specialists were only too willing to demonstrate the latest innovation in laser engraving and prove that this machine is in fact the future of intelligent pre-press.