EPSONS MONNA LISA 8000 TICKS ALL THE BOXES TO UNLOCK THE DIGITAL TEXTILE MARKET WITH AFFORDABLE HIGH QUALITY MACHINERY

“Over the last decade digital technologies have advanced significantly and now provide the machinery and the software tools that can bring around a new future for the textile industry – THE BIG RESET. Close proximity production is forecast to become standard practice in the near future as retail and consumer behaviour shifts, opening up a whole host of opportunities for the print community – new entrants and established businesses”.

The Textile industry is in flux – Challenged by a whole host of issues which include smaller print runs, super-fast delivery and an urgent requirement for an improved environmental footprint, the industry urgently needs to reinvest in its future.

Over the last decade digital technologies have advanced significantly and now provide the machinery and the software tools that can bring around a new future for the textile industry – THE BIG RESET. Close proximity production is forecast to become standard practice in the near future as retail and consumer behaviour shifts, opening up a whole host of opportunities for the print community – new entrants and established businesses.

Print on Demand was once only for small, short orders – now its big business.

As the footprint of fashion production shifts across the globe retailers are adapting their supply chains to ensure that they are risk averse and in doing so - importantly take back control of their stock. Moving to incorporate nearshore production makes perfect sense – the buyer reduces risk - stock turn is accelerated and the consumer benefits from enhanced product diversity at speed.

But how is this all going to be achieved? We have to unlock the availability of high-quality print production which in the past has demanded significant investment – until now.

Epson’s new offering to the textile print community – the ML8000 - is sure to continue to disrupt the industry, it’s fast, affordable and built to service the demands of the textile printing specialist.

It removes the early challenges associated with digital printing to provide a myriad of time saving technologies that work alongside the print process to improve operational costs, reduce energy and ink usage, maintain print quality automatically and control the textiles themselves to keep them stable and aligned whilst printing at speed. Many of these new applications are mirrored from traditional print process and are now embedded into Epson’s digital production methods.

Significantly Epson are building this machine in Japan, and has built a brand-new state-of-the-art factory at its headquarters in Nagano, Japan, to manufacture both its large format and industrial textile printers on one site. Thus, signalling their serious intent to service a world-wide textile printing market which is crying out for innovative, faster and more economic digital textile production products. Epson, building on the 70-year heritage of Robustelli, have produced a high-quality printing machine that delivers speed, quality and sustainability at an affordable price. The heritage of Robustelli is visible at every turn with immaculate attention to detail covering all the main pain points that the digital printer knows so well.

“The Epson – Robustelli partnership has been fundamental to the development of the Monna Lisa series. Working together to provide innovative solutions we have ensured that the knowledge and legacy of textile manufacturing has been transferred to a digital process. Epson’s products offer robust, durable and reliable solutions that address and adapt to the industries challenges - as can been seen in the new ML8000.”

– Paolo Crespi,  Sales Director, Epson – EMEA, Digital printing and Inks.

Tiny fragments of fibre, yarn, lint and neps - which can cause white spot print faults are removed before the fabric is printed by a fluff blower. Simple and effective.

Creases and wrinkles generated as the fabric moves over the print bed to then cause white un-printed crease marks are removed mechanically by millimetrically applied tension control - using accurate belt position control technology which automatically detects the belt feeding distance to ensure highly precise fabric feeding.

Poor image quality caused by dot misalignment is reduced by the application of the novel multi-layer halftone technology (MLHT) - where a multilevel half-toning algorithm is used to overcome some of the challenges of multi-channel printing. In this algorithm, each channel is processed so that it can be printed using multiple inks of approximately the same hue, achieving a single ink layer this randomises the halftone dot pattern on each layer and produces a clearer and more precise print.

Print quality is more stable and doesn’t drift during a print length - thanks to the Epson dynamic alignment stabilizer (DAS) technology in which the printhead nozzles are continuously aligned to each other. This feature ensures continuous print quality by controlling waveforms on each printhead chip for higher dot placement accuracy and more uniform dot density on each pass.

Ink mist – the cause of the dreaded ink spots on the fabric surface is an issue of the past because the Monna Lisa 8000 uses a filtered air circulation system which removes ink mist to prevent droplets forming and dropping at random.

Print quality is also enhanced by the use of Precisioncore® printheads that utilise a high-density print chip which can generate over 40 million precise dots and which uses Epson microweave technology to reduce graininess. The microweave process does not allow the same nozzle to print an entire row of dots - giving vibrant and accurate colour reproduction as well as immaculate reproduction of detail and fine images.

Uninterrupted print run lengths are further enhanced by the use of 10 litre hot swappable high-capacity ink cartridges.

“All of these innovations address the traditional pain points of the digital textile printer and all of the above functions serve to further reduce operator intervention and underwrite print quality - saving time, money and resources within the print process whilst producing high quality printed product” - EPSON ML8000

All textile print providers (at any scale) are concerned about ongoing maintenance and machine downtime.

Both are critical issues and must be implemented as best practice protocol if consistent print standards are to be achieved and preserved. Significant downtime or excessive supervision is potentially yet another operational overhead.

For easy operative maintenance, the Monna Lisa 8000 printhead can be adjusted and even changed in as little as 30 minutes thanks to camera driven automatic calibration function, it also has an easy-to-replace fabric wiper roll which automatically ensures that the printhead nozzles are clean at all times.

All of these innovations address the traditional pain points of the digital textile printer and all of the above functions serve to further reduce operator intervention and underwrite print quality - saving time, money and resources within the print process whilst producing high quality printed product.

Importantly the ML8000 also has immaculate sustainability and environmental credentials. Epson Genesta inks are all environmentally certified by OEKO-TEX, Bluesign and GOTS.

As shown in a recent study comparing a Epson Monna Lisa digital printer to a traditional rotary screen printer - the Epson machine was found to use 27% less water, to vastly reduce the amount of effluent sent to waste water treatment plants, and to have an overall carbon footprint more than 40% less than its rotary screen rival.

Yet, beyond sustainability, the biggest pain point for the digital textile printer involves their financial transition from modest - entry-level print speeds - up to a genuinely volume print machine without breaking the bank. Affordability in this sector has so far held back new investors and established traditional textile print providers.

Epson describe the price of the machine - which prints at over 150m2 per hour - as being ‘”affordable” which perhaps means that with a small premium over existing competitors machine offerings, which seem to max out, on pigments particularly, at around 50 metres an hour – that the digital textile printer can now expand to propel themselves into a different world using Epson’s latest offering - and in doing so service the markets requirement across multiple ink types for volume print on demand with speed, agility and high quality digital textile printing.