We’ve been through the analog-to-digital transformation in a number of industries, and the textile industry is now undergoing this transformation. But as we have seen from past experience, legacy technologies usually stick around for a while. In textiles, especially in direct-to-garment (DTG) printing, screen printing has long been a staple, and it has many advantages. For example, operators are able to choose the ink type most appropriate for the fabric being used, and fabrics don’t typically need pre-treatment as is often required with digital printing.

“This is an advantage of screen printing inks,” said Peter Walsh, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for The M&R Companies, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of screen printing equipment for the graphic and textile industries. “Especially when you are dealing with performance fabrics, you can get better elasticity and bleed resistance with screen printing inks. Another advantage, of course, is cost. Screen printing inks are pretty much a commodity and sell for somewhere in the range of $15 per kilo, while digital inks are much more expensive; in fact, white ink for digital textile printers can cost as much as $100 per kilo.”

Screen printing does have its disadvantages, though, and those are the same disadvantages any analog technology has: In a market where run lengths are declining along with turnaround time requirements, analog technologies such as screen printing become cost prohibitive, largely due to the long set-up and job change-over times inherent in the process. Walsh adds, “The downside for screen printing, especially as there is growing demand for photo-realistic images, is that it could take 10 or more screens to produce the image using screen printing alone. That adds up to a lot of cost in time and materials, and if the runs are short, it just doesn’t work financially.”