Soft signage

Sublimation and print on tissue for soft signage

The printing on textile materials for advertising using, called also soft signage, can be divided in three different modality.
Soft signage with ecosolvent, sublimatic and water base inks. Let's see them in detail.

Print with ecosolvent inks

Nowadays graphics on textile materials joins graphics on banner, as it is a "green" substitute to plastic. The use of tissue in increasing and the quality is very high.
Many pubblic spaces decide to use "green" materials for image and quality reasons. The material usually is a polyester tissue PVC coated and fireproof certificated. It's usable also as backlighted thanks ot it's microdrilling. It's important to identify the right materials on the basis of grammage and white points. Once you choose the most suitable, you can proceed to printing. The profiles for textiles are widely available on WhiteRIP.

Print with sublimation inks SBL

The sublimation is the process used for transfer with a heatpress the ink contained in the transfer paper directly to the tissue. During the heating, with temperatures above 140°, the ink passes from solid to gaseous state istantanously.
Sublimation is possible on synthetic materials, fabrics and not, that, at 140° slackening their molecular structure, allow the pigment, which is transformed into dye, to combine with the material in a permanent manner. The final result allows to have a surface or fabric without any relief or thickness, washable and with the softness of the material.
For sublimation process are needed a printer with quality sublimation inks and a heat press of adequate size for the product you produce. With sublimatic printing it's possible to realize flags, banners, panels, tshirt etc.

Printing with water base inks

Printing with water base inks is a tecnique that is becoming increasingly popular in the world of printing on fabric.
It's sufficient a digital printer adapted to print on fabric and a heat press.
The graphics is printed directly on the garment with nearly photographic quality.
With this tecnique, and appropriate supports, you can print on T-shirts, jackets, caps, jeans, sweatshirts etc.
After printing with the use of the heat press the print is fixed permaently to the fabric.