Images Magazine Digital Edition February 2019

KB INDUSTRY EVENT www.images-magazine.com 42 images FEBRUARY 2019 Marshall Atkinson is a leading production and efficiency expert for the decorated apparel industry, and the owner of Atkinson Consulting, LLC. Marshall focuses on operational efficiency, continuous improvement and workflow strategy, business planning, employee motivation, management and sustainability. He is a frequent trade show speaker, article and blog author, and is the host of InkSoft’s The Big Idea podcast. atkinsontshirt.com colour. I really liked the Striped Hooded Sweatshirt (SF77R) as that pattern could set off some great design work. My designer brain was already imagining what I could place there for clients. The garment is very soft, and at 7.2oz of preshrunk 50/50 cotton and polyester, it is decoration-ready. It comes in four colours: midnight stripe, denim stripe, fire brick stripe and grey stripe. There is a tech pocket for gadgets, and it also has a tearaway label. Best addition Many shops are making the switch to water-based ink, and Matsui has recognised the need to easily mix its inks to match Pantone or custom design colours. To achieve this goal, they partnered with Corob, an Italian company known for manufacturing mixing systems worldwide. The result is the Shinobi Lab, which is a small but powerful mixing system designed for Matsui’s line of water-based inks for the decorated apparel industry. The system is easy to use and will reduce the need to have a key person that has an eye for mixing. Now, anyone in the shop can do it by using their system and pressing a button. How the system works is that the user adds specific grams of base and pigments to a container based on the amounts needed to produce a particular colour. Everything is recorded in the system. You can make small or large quantities of ink, and even custom blends. What I liked was that during a demonstration, the person talking through things started off with a few hundred grams more of the base than they really needed. Instead of scooping out the overage, the system could adjust for the new weight and calculated the new amounts of pigments needed to make the right colour. Biggest potential impact It’s no secret that PolyOne has a big footprint globally when it comes to selling ink. To further that point, they combined the industry knowledge and wisdom of Wilflex, Rutland, Union, Printop and QCM brands to develop a new line of ink for the decorated apparel industry. PolyOne‘s new range of Aquarius water- based screen printing inks, part of the Zodiac collection, has been designed for consumer sustainability demands, but without compromising the performance and durability expectations of the printer. It is a full package system with 15 pigment concentrates, CMYK inks, bases, high solids, special effects, discharge (including non-formaldehyde) and even ink that is designed to print on high mesh counts. It was built to provide very soft prints while meeting stringent compliance and regulatory requirements. Best buzz In its now traditional corner of ISS Long Beach, Ryonet created and sustained a lot of buzz surrounding the new launch of the RoqPrint Now, an inline hybrid press. It was obvious from the start of the show that there was something special going on in the Roq and Ryonet booth. Visitors from all over the globe set out specifically to see this new technology in action, and Roq delivered. This new press had a lot of people talking. In a nutshell, this is a direct-to-garment press built on a traditional screen printing press frame (and screen printing stations can be added in as well). Shirts are loaded, pretreated, flash cured, printed and flashed again... before the garment is off-loaded to a dryer belt. This is all in one step, and the benefit of this process is that the dryer belt does not have to be reduced in speed too much to accommodate the water-based ink like other DTG presses. With the RoqPrint Now, there is a solid web-to-market solution for one-off production runs that are capable of delivering production rates between 100- 200 per hour. If there are larger quantity runs, the press is capable of speeds of over 400 impressions per hour. Offering an in-line pre-treatment application and curing solution, a dedicated digital white ink print head and a dedicated digital colour ink print head, the RoqPrint Now allows for faster high quality digital garment printing than ever before with no screens required. The future of high quality digital garment printing is here, and it’s called RoqPrint Now. Best future idea Imagine a world where your embroidered design helps with the electronics of your garment! Welcome to the world of Madeira High Conductive Thread. Smart textiles are intelligent textiles, which bring technology and textiles together and where functionality is directly integrated into the garment structure. HC40 and HC12 are skin- friendly, comfortable, biocompatible and washable, and therefore ideal for smart textile applications. Amongst all metals, silver offers the highest electrical and thermal conductivity. In addition, it has antibacterial and antistatic properties. The applications for this could be enormous for the industry. Lighting and LEDs, textile-based sensors and actuators, heating and flexible circuit paths. It’s going to be really fun to see how the decorated apparel industry and other manufacturers use this new product! Biggest reason to go Sure, there are plenty of reasons to go to any trade show. You can learn about new products, meet your vendors, see new product launches and even take a few classes. (I taught two.) But if you check out the comments made in any of the Facebook groups, by far the biggest reason to go is to meet members of your industry tribe. It’s a fact. Decorators like to hang out with other decorators. People swap stories, tips, and share challenges. It’s fun to connect and keep in touch. There are always events around town you can attend, such as Ryonet’s now famous yacht cruise. (They took about 400 guests on a yacht Saturday night and cruised around the Long Beach seas for a few hours.) Or even the Ink Kitchen Shop Talk area hosted by the always smart Rick Roth from Mirror Image. “See you next year!“ The new RoqPrint Now created a big buzz at the show