ZIMMER AUSTRIA hat als erste Firma weltweit ein gemeinsames Projekt mit DyStar zur Entwicklung einer kommerziellen Plattform für digitales Drucken mit Vat Tinte gestartet. Die ultra-high-lightfast Anwendung, mit geplantem Start Mitte 2016, zielt auf anspruchsvolle Märkte ab, wie z.B. Luxuspolsterungen, Arbeitskleidung und Militärbekleidung.
CEO Tony Naschberger definiert den Anwendungsbereich zwar als Nische, aber zugleich als hoch profitabel - damit fällt dieser Bereich genau in das Marktprofil von ZIMMER.AUSTRIA. Vat dye Druck nimmt ca. 3% des Martkvolumens ein, was ungefair so viel an Volumen verspricht, wie der komplette Digitaldruck Markt.
said these were niche but high-value applications that fitted with Zimmer´s market profile. In fact, vat dye printing represents around 3% of the broad textile-printing market, which is almost as much in volume terms as the total of all today´s digitally printed fabrics.
To date, ZIMMER AUSTRIA and DyStar have run tests with four colors – yellow, blue, black and a dark red – but they expect to have eight colors by the time of the commercial launch. The inks are optimized for the FUJIFILM Starfire print heads, with internal ink recirculation, use on the latest generation of Colaris³ printers. They are expected to be marketed for use on other brands of printer with the same print heads. The process requires pretreatment with alkali, followed by printing, steaming (to convert the dye to its soluble form) and washing to remove the pretreatment and any unfixed dye. In the laboratory the fabric is being dried before being steamed off-line but ZIMMER AUSTRIA foresees a one-stage process of in-line pretreatment by ChromoJET, followed by printing and steaming.
