TEXTILES.ORG
Durst Phototechnik AG, a leading manufacturer of industrial digital printing equipment, will present its new Textile Business Unit at the FESPA trade show in Hamburg, Germany, May 24-27. The new division, headed by Christoph Gamper, is working on the next generation of digital printing technologies for textiles.
The Durst Textile Team, based at the company’s development facility in Kufstein, Austria, has been entrusted with the task of designing the high-performance textile machine and coordinating Durst’s proprietary Quadro printhead technology with the relevant textile specifications. In parallel with this, specialists at the Research Center in Lienz, Austria, are testing high-grade inks for textile printing based on dispersion, reactive and acid inks. The aim of this project, entitled KAPPA, is to have a powerful digital textile printer—with a printing speed well in excess of 500 m2/hr and with excellent printing quality—ready for presentation at the ITMA 2011 trade show in Barcelona, Spain.
Durst has launched a host of innovations in the course of its 80-year history. In 1994 the company developed the Durst Lambda, the world’s first laser-based output device for the high-resolution digital printing of images on photosensitive roll materials. Since 2001, the company has been developing large-format inkjet-based printers; in 2005, Durst adapted inkjet technology to suit industrial applications in the fields of ceramics, glass, laminates and floor slabs, with the result that now even rigid materials can be printed digitally with an unlimited range of colors and with high resolution. In 2010, Durst brought out the Rhotex 320, a dye sublimation textile printer which sets new standards of quality in the industrial soft signage segment.
For the past 30 years, digitization has been making massive inroads in the textile industry. In an age of rapidly changing fashions, shrinking budgets and declining orders, the market calls for total flexibility. Vendors need to operate as versatile service providers, allowing their clientele complete freedom in design and choice of colors, and producing and delivering from one to one thousand meters of material on request.