Last week’s SGIA Expo—the final one—was a bittersweet affair for those of us who have been attending the show for as long as we have. But then I may have been the only one who felt that way. Anyway, by all accounts, the show was a success, with the official attendee count coming in at 24,000+. Make of that what you will, but regardless, the exhibitors I visited were generally happy with the floor traffic and the excitement and enthusiasm—and open wallets—of the attendees.

What were the major themes of the show? There was not a lot, if anything, that was truly revolutionary. I’ve seen saying that for a few shows now, and it’s certainly the case that the focus now is on taking the revolutionary hardware developments of the past decade or so and expanding on them, broadening portfolios, and improving quality and performance. It wasn’t that long ago that LED UV curing was the hot new thing (or, perhaps, the nothot new thing, if you want to be technical about it), but now LED curing has become more or less de rigueur for UV printing. If there is a new hardware revolution or potentially disruptive technology on the way, it will likely be single-pass, and for both small- and wide-format printing. We’ll be keeping our eye on that as the technology grows.

The SGIA Expo has long had a strong focus on textile printing, and the original screen printing and embroidery systems have been complemented and supplemented by digital inkjet printing in all of its various incarnations. Not that analog textile decorating is going away any time soon (remember last Friday’s look at trends in screen printing establishments), but digital sits comfortably next to analog to handle shorter runs as well as take advantage of the growing concept of the microfactory. The Holy Grail for inkjet printer manufacturers—and their inkmakers—is being able to print on as wide a variety of fabrics as possible, be it direct-to or via some kind of transfer medium. At the same time, eliminating many of the traditional textile printing pre- and post-press processing steps (like steaming, washing, etc.) is also a top priority, not only from a production efficiency perspective, but also an environmental one.