Day of Digital Textile Printing
Day of Digital Textile Printing took place within the INLEGMASH Conference and Russian Week of Textile Industry at EXPOCENTRE Fairgrounds. It was organised by EXPOCENTRE, Soyuzlegprom, and the Digital Textile magazine.
The programme opened with the panel discussion on what's going on: changes in the digital textile and cutting market in 2022. It was moderated by Dmitry Startsev, Editor-in-Chief at the Publish magazine.
Andrey Makachev, President at Smart-T, spoke about trends in the digital textile equipment market using the Smart-T group as an example. Smart-T is one of the largest suppliers of equipment for textile printing and the official distributor of Mimaki, Japan, which is the world leader in the field of development and production of wide-format inkjet printers, cutting systems and related professional software, including for the textile industry.
At the same time, the Smart-T group includes Kovcheg, which supplies equipment from leading Chinese manufacturers. “Today, due to the current realities in our product range and in Russia in general, equipment from China comes to the fore,” says Andrey Makachev. The supply of Mimaki products has encountered some difficulties for well-known reasons. From April to July last year the Smart-T group worked at a loss, buying goods at a higher price and having to sell at a lower one, but on the whole the year was successful due to supplies from China. “At the same time,” the expert said, “Mimaki is not withdrawing from the Russian market. It is aiming to overcome all the difficulties it has now and to resume deliveries in the near future.”
The Russcom representative, Vadim Sukharev, drew the audience's attention to the need for correct and competent operation of the textile printing equipment, which greatly reduces the percentage of rejected printed material, reduces ink consumption, and increases the life of expensive spare parts. He also spoke about the Operator Skills School, created by Russcom specialists to improve the skills of the operators of printing equipment. They are trained by the company's technical consultants both in theory and in practice.
Karina Andreeva, Deputy Director General at ASSOL Center for Applied Computer Technologies, introduced the latest types of garment design software, which are fast, accurate and convenient work on pattern creation in digital environment from sketch to pattern set and cutting. For example, so called autospreading enables to perform high quality and fast pattern designing for automatic and manual cutting. Such advanced technology as photodigitizer performs pattern/drawing input into a computer by means of a digital camera or a smartphone. The digital fashion designer produces a virtual photorealistic fitting of fabrics and prints on a photo of the garment, etc.
The panel discussion also covered marketing in textile printing, personalisation of textile products, changes in printer offerings, consumables, and other issues.
The key event of the day was a panel discussion with market leaders in digital printing, decorating and textile cutting, organised by the Digital Textile magazine. It was moderated by Mikhail Shpilkin, the magazine's founder, who presented a report on the results of 2022 and the prospects of the industry, as well as the results of last year's research on the Russian digital printing market.
The panel was followed by a session on digital cutting of textiles. It was devoted to the existing cutting technologies for textiles, single and multi-layer cutting, specific applications, choice of cutting technology and tools for different materials, and digital cutting software.
The Day ended with the panel on digital printing and textile decorating – practical experience, which also focused on advanced printing equipment, textile decoration technologies, consumables, and the production of personalised turnkey products.
Press Service, EXPOCENTRE AO