Digitex are award winning specialists in Digital Textile Printing, We have produced high quality prints for some of the most demanding clients in the industry. Custom print any design to a range of fabrics including Cotton, Linen, Silks and Polyesters.

Digital Textile printing allows for fabulous full colour, photographic prints on to a wide range of fabrics for small and large print runs up to 1.6 meters wide. The end result is washable, fade resistant and suitable for a wide range of applications including sampling, Corporate apparel, Sportswear, Interior displays and fashion garments.

Full Design Service

We offer the full design service or we can assist you to setup your designs ready for continuous seamless repeats. To make sure you know exactly what the final result will look like we can provide a small strike-off proof of your design on the actual fabric prior to production runs.

Incredible full colour printing on a range of fabrics

Digital printing offers you an amazing high quality detailed full colour photographic prints to natural and synthetic fabrics

For natural fabrics we can provide a range of pre-prepared fabrics suitable for digital textile printing such as Cotton, Silk and Linen. Talk to us about options to pre-treat your own fabrics ready for printing.

We also print to Polyester for vibrant prints on to high performance active sports fabrics, Swim wear fabrics and lustrous satin. Polyester fabric printing uses the sublimation printing process and requires no special pretreatment so you can provide your own material ready to print.

The Advantages of Digital Textile Printing

To make to most of Digital Textile Printing its important to take advantage of its unique capabilities:

• No film-work or engraving costs.
• Unlimited designs and photographic quality printing.
• Outstanding print quality offers a unique print which can not be easily copied.
• Proof complete garment designs before starting production.
• Easy customisation and multiple colour-ways.
• Quick turnaround and Just in time delivery means no inventory.
• Shortens the overall process from design to production.
• One off prints and production runs.

Stock pre-treated natural fabrics and Polyester fabrics

We carry a selection of ready to print natural fabrics and Polyester fabrics listed below. Typically we hold enough stock for sampling, if you require more than 5 meters of any fabric please talk to us so we can ensure we have the stock in time to meet your production deadlines.

If you wish to supply your own fabric it is critical you read the notes at the bottom of this page.

Natural Fabric Printing Specifications

• A range of ready to print pretreated Cottons, Silks and Linen fabrics in stock
• Supply your own fabric for pre-treatment and printing (minimums apply)
• Print any length to rolls
• Printed with Permanent Reactive Dyes
• Fabulous Full Colour Photographic Printing
• Washable

Polyester Printing Specifications (Sublimation)

• Print to any 100% White Polyester or White Polyester Lycra
• Print any length to rolls or pieces
• You can supply your own fabric
• Printed with Permanent Sublimation Disperse Dyes
• Vibrant Fabulous Full Colour Photographic Printing
• Washable

Supplying your own fabric

There are some limitations on the type of fabrics that are suitable for digital textile printing and it is important that you talk to us to discuss your needs. As a guide we can accept almost any 100% polyester fabric you supply, however all other fabrics such as cottons and silks must be pre-treated before printing.

Supplying you own fabric for Sublimation Polyester Printing

Please ensure any Polyester fabric you supply is 100% polyester or 80%/20% Polyester-Lycra. Any other synthetic materials such as Nylon may shrink and distort with the heat necessary for this process to work.

To avoid any disappointment and loss of time, we recommend that you provide approximately 1 square meter sample of fabric for testing. We will print to this sample at no charge to see how the fabric performs with this process.

For production runs you will need to supply:

• ONLY CLEAN WHITE Polyester supplied on a roll or cut to specifications.
• An additional 2-5 metres of fabric to be used for colour and print tests.
• For large print runs you many need to provide an additional 20% fabric

Please check with us before you supply any fabric, as we may not be able to use the fabric if it is not cut correctly.

Supplying fabrics for direct printing to Cotton and Silks

It is essential that fabrics that are directly printed are pre-treated. Without this pre-treatment the dyes will not adhere to the fabric and will wash out.

Pre-treatment option 1

We can pre-treat panels of fabric approximately 1600mm x 2200mm in size. This is ideal for sampling and testing to see if the fabric is suitable for the digital textile process.

Pre-treatment option 2

We can pre-treat a roll of fabric. To achieve the best results when supplying you own fabric, we require 20 meters of WHITE fabric to be pre-treated, tested and colour profiled. For new and unusual fabrics that we have not printed before we may require up to 5-10 meters of this fabric to be used to calibrate the colours, fine tune the printing process and print colour charts. The remaining fabric can be used for sampling.

The cost of the pre-treatment will depend on the type of fabric and the amount of chemicals the fabric will absorb.

Please make sure you supply add an additional 20% fabric (minimum of an extra 5 meters) above what you require to allow for wastage and tests. Turn around for pre-treating fabric is currently 10-20 working days.

The Printing Process for Natural Fabrics

	Step 1 : Pretreatment of the Fabric All fabric must be pre-treated and dried prior direct digital textile printing. The coating is designed to enhance the quality of the printing and is essential in allowing the dyes to bond to the fabric during the fixing process.   If the fabric is not pre-treaded then the dye will simply wash out.
	Step 2 : Printing direct to pretreated fabric The image is printed directly to the pretreated fabric. Every fabric is tested and colour calibrated prior to printing. Each different type of fabric will have different printing characteristics that need to be tested and measured to obtain optimum results.   At this stage the dyes is not 'fixed' to the fibres. If the dry print were to be washed 95% of the dye would wash out.
	Step 3 : Steaming to Fix the Dye After printing the fabric is printed it is steamed. As the fabric passed through a steam fixing process the dye chemically binds to the fibers in the fabric creating a permanent bond.
	Step 4 : Washing and Drying Finally fabrics are washed and dried to remove any excess dye and pretreatment chemicals. Because the pretreatment is wasted out the original look and feel of the fabric is preserved.