S+C inkjet tex is a professional manufacturer of polyester digital direct printing fabrics which are used for the printing of hydrophilic dye sublimation ink. Their flame-retardant products have passed them German DIN4102 B1 and French NFP92-507 M1 standard.
The exhibition was held in National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) from March 11th to March 14th. Despite the low temperature caused by incomplete facility of the venue, 13 thousand exhibitors and spectators came with passion, heating up the atmosphere of the exhibition.
Part 1 6 groups of photos
Ok, let Darren take you back to the exhibition. First let’s see some groups of photos:
Part 2 A question, and a thought.
I believe that after you see the 6 groups of photos, you will have a question. If it’s not for the comments below the photos, many people will think it’s the whole 8.1H pavilion. Admittedly, the entire 8.1H pavilion represents the advertisement products and ideas, but the photos above don’t tell it all. Actually I want to say, the photos include the booth of S+C inkjet tex in 4.1 pavilion and the booth of KEUNDO in 5.1 pavilion.
Many spectators wondered during their visit why equipment suppliers and material suppliers appeared in the exhibition this year. Did they start to sell ideas instead of products? The question makes sense to some extent. It makes sense because it was traditional for the suppliers to present their products well and sell their products well. But the question is not entirely correct because there was some innovation in the thought:
1.To present a product is not only to present the entity, but also the purpose of the product, in other words, the capability of it when it is used;
2.Small companies make production, medium-sized companies make products and big companies provide solutions and services(The sizes in the sentence doesn’t refer to the scale of the company but the thought of product and selling);
3.Sometimes the customers will be at a loss about what they can do, whether the products will sell well and whether the products will make profits when we simply present the facility, materials and exhibition appliances. Then what we should do is to answer their questions to satisfy them. How can we satisfy them? Let the truth talk!
Part 3 Do you read one intention?
What counts in product making is make what others don’t make, and make well what others make mediocrely. When we make presentations, we need to convey it to the customers. We mentioned the idea of presenting products, now let’s analyze a case:
Many spectators and exhibitors were awed at the arrangement of the KEUNDO booth. What can we read from the arrangement? Let’s analyze it:
1.The booth was established by fabric quick-show materials. The color ranged from yellow, green to blue. Together with the lighting effect, the entire feeling it gave us was solemn, simple but elegant, and calm. But the yellow and green color above the booth brought some vividness; (Image advertising)
2.Then what did the elegant design tell us? Equipment. No matter the color effect or the picture precision, they needed to be output by the equipment. So the machines printing on site and the finished products presented all showed that the equipment can output beautiful colors with precision; (Self-presentation)
3.All the display racks were designed and manufactured by Suzhou Show Factory, and the pictures were made by its subsidiary Meitu. And the pictures were printed by KEUNDO TX6 printers. (model effect, public praise advertising)
4.The material used on the display racks were the new type four way stretch elastic fabric JYPS-FR-12 by S+C inkjet tex. It was flame-retardant by German DIN4102 B1 standard. Its weight was 160g, but the covering ability way passed elastic fabrics which had a weight of over 200g before. But what everybody knows is that four way stretch elastic fabric is only used to make finished product by transfer printing because many polyester direct printing machine can’t print materials which has high elasticity due to deformation caused by stretching in length direction during printing. However, the advantage of the facility by KEUNDO was that it had no leading tape but it still could actively send forward the fabric. It could print the material when it was under low tensity so that the material did not deform.. (Capability demonstration, highlight of advantage)
5.Orders can only be made by cooperation, combination of products, specialization and highlight of strength. (To cooperate is to have more advantage in competition)
Part 4 Bamboo shoots
It was only a few years ago when the dye sublimation direct printing technology was introduced into China. Darren makes a survey and knows that the development of dye sublimation machines on the market is as follows:
Early models were based on Mutoh 1604W and MIMAKI JV33, for instance, Shenyang Centurystar, Shanghai Saer, etc. They pioneered and had a big market share domestically, especially the equipment by Shenyang Centurystar. Later on, enterprises developed and designed machines based on their own accumulated experience, and the equipments developed towards larger width and higher speed.
DGEN from Korea sold equipments of a 180cm width (5th generation nozzle by Epson) when they first entered China market, then they made 3.3m width equipment. Later, domestic equipments developed from 1.6m to 1.8m, from 2.2m to 2.6m, finally to 3.2m in width. Darren gets the information that the 3.2m equipment by Aowei (Epson nozzle) has a high market share. Later on, to adapt to the fast development of the market and to quickly complete orders, in the recent 2 years, equipments began to use Konica and Ricoh industrial nozzles. Especially after DGEN and KEUNDO equipments entered China, the development accelerated.
The development of equipment showed by this exhibition was like bamboo shoots. When Darren participated in the exhibition, he counted the factories making direct printing machines:
Imported: Dgen, KEUNDO, DGI from Korea (Korea will export more machines to China under China-Korea Free Trade Agreement), colorjet from India.
Domestic: 3.2m width: JHF, Flora, Twinjet, Addtop, WIT-color, Anhui Liyu, Nanjing printpretty, Human, Shanghai Saer, excolor, Nanjing Forni Digital, Shenyang Centurystar.
Equipments below 2.6m width: Addtop, Shenyang Centurystar, Aodeli, Shanghai Aowei, Biange Technology, Longyin, Xunyi Digital, Liaoning Zhongye, etc.
(The collection is not comprehensive)
We can find that factories that don’t used to make direct printing machines begin to make these machines. At the same time, we can find that what Darren says makes sense. Most of the machines have a width of 3.2m, which is the largest width on the market. It is said that foreign countries begin to make 5m width dye sublimation equipments. We can see that 5m width is the next record. In fact, many domestic UV machines have 5m width, so we will see 5m width dye sublimation machines in the near future.
Part 5 Display behind the booth
What Darren saw on the exhibition was not only the variety of equipment. He found that although many enterprises made the textile machine, they had some problems during the exhibition:
1.Each manufacturer saw that textile direct printing machine was the future. But when they made the machine with no previous feedback or experience, the machine might be barely satisfactory. However, they wanted to tell the spectators that they had the machine. Where did they display the machine? Behind the booth, on the side that didn’t attract people, or covered by other equipments.
2.Supporting facility. Many manufacturers made the printers by their own and bought the heaters. The heaters had conservative color mode. When you visit one exhibitor, you find they use one mode. When you visit another exhibitor, you find they use the same mode. What bored Darren was that he could clearly tell the manufacturer of the heaters because the shape and even the painting were the same. Where was the product differentiation? What was the competitive advantage? We had to find it on the printers.
3.Machine design. You use medium-weight bracket, I use the same. You use heavy-weight bracket, I use the same. You choose Konica, I choose the same. You choose Ricoh, I choose the same. There are only these mature nozzles on the market. Where is the product differentiation?
4.Supporting ink. To have more advantage, enterprises sometimes chose low-quality ink. The printing effect was dull and blurred. When they print banner cloth, the effect was not good. Some enterprises chose to print on thicker materials rather than banner cloth. However, at the same time, you couldn’t print on elastic fabric because the whole tension system still adopted the hard media printing device (One equipment we use adopts a tension system by Pinzheng Technololgy to print on Spandex fabrics without deformation.). What the enterprises could choose was to print on roll up banners which had no elasticity, because we didn’t see many manufacturers print on lamp-box fabrics. When you hide from problems, the problems never disappear.
5.Many suppliers said they could print on polyester pongee, but the effect was not good.
6.The equipment suppliers didn’t have experience before they design the equipment, and it couldn’t be put into application. Many equipment suppliers didn’t know double penetration flags.
7.Market survey and research and prediction are not made in time. After 2011, the quick show products became quite popular, which determined the usage of elastic fabric. But elastic fabrics were mainly used in heat transfer printing. The development of direct printing machines didn’t seize the opportunity. Though the domestic tension device manufacturers made these products, they didn’t promote them until KEUNDO came to China. We can see from the above photos that many quick show and pop up display rack suppliers are waiting for elastic fabric direct printing equipment.
8.The over 3m wide equipment was still using the clumsy and slow flatulence axis. We should know that ordinary banner cloth on the large width machine was around 40kg, with some thicker materials reaching 60kg. If we count in the over 10kg flatulence axis, how heavy would it be? Have you considered the operators when you design the machine?
OK, if you match all the 8 points above, your machine should be put in an unattractive place.
We hope that more equipment suppliers can see the picture below made by Darren, and we hope it will be of help to you.
Part 6 The most popular material
1.Banner cloth. The banner cloth mentioned here refers to the 110g warp knitted banner cloth like JYQC-01. Because of the low price and large usage, banner cloth is the introductory product in dye sublimation printing material. But many suppliers can’t even print this introductory product well.
OK, let Darren tell you how to print banner cloth well. The 3 key points of printing banner cloth are: color, transparency and precision. It’s easy to make good colors. You need only to choose good inks and banner cloth with good coatings, and make ICC well. However, printing transparency is difficult. There used to be a customer who received an order from Nanjing Youth Sports Meeting. The officially provided banner had a delta E=10 of colors difference of two sides. No matter how he sampled, the delta E stayed over 13. Finally he found Darren. After changing material and with on-site guidance, most of the colors had a delta E below 5. Some had a delta E near 2, and all the colors had a delta E below 7.
Some will say that if you have good ink, you will naturally have good printing. This is totally an excuse for their failure. Darren has tried domestic inks, imported inks, even inks that are not sold domestically. There are over 10 types of inks to be tested. Admittedly, inks greatly influence the transparency, but without a good coating, it is all nonsense. Moreover, the key points that influence transparency are not just these two.
Let’s see an analysis graph made by Darren:
(After much consideration, this graph involves company secret so it is not uploaded. Please understand. If you pay a visit to our company, we will show it to you)
OK, by now you should know what’s influencing printing transparency. If you still can’t make good transparency, find Darren in S+C inkjet tex!