Margaret and Wendy have returned from the Long Beach show where they were kept busy by a steady stream of Canadian printers passing through the PolyOne (Wilflex) booth. As usual, it was by far the busiest ink booth at the show. Many were there for the display of superb soft hand and special effects shirts as well as the seminars in the booth theatre.
Information sheets on how to produce the soft hand and special effects prints were available to attendees but if you missed the show and would like to catch up on what is new and exciting, feel free to call Margaret or Wendy toll-free at 1-800-661-7766.
In other show news, Stretch devices were showing a sampling press designed to quickly and easily do sampling of multi-coloured prints without tying up a production press. According to both Margaret and Wendy it is an impressive device that could be of great benefit to a good number of Canadian textile printers. Want to know more? A toll-free call to 1-800-661-7766 will get you answers and literature.
We keep an eye on the progress of digital textile printing and make a point of updating ourselves at every show. After this show we are of the opinion that there has been little advance in that technology. All the usual suspects were showing their digital printers but it seems that the old problems with speed, print heads clogging with lint and dust in a production environment, printing on darks and cost have not been resolved. And then, as everyone knows, the popular special effects like glitter, foil and raised textures cannot be done digitally. Until those problems are solved we believe that digital printing on textiles will have a very limited application and remain marginalized. We think that a clue that digital textile printing should be taken seriously will be when the major plastisol screen printing ink manufacturers start making ink for digital textile printers.
Overall, the show was busy and, as one might expect in these times, well attended by foreign printers. It is, in our opinion, still the best textile screen printing show for Canadian textile screen printers to attend for exposure to new product developments, ideas and inspiration. Unlike most other shows available to Canadian textile printers, this is not just a garment show, it covers every aspect of textile screen printing.