By Olivia Cahoon
Part 2 of 2
Fluorescent inks offer decorative applications in bright and glowing colors for rigid substrates and fabric. They are used for home décor, sports apparel, and glow-in-the-dark signage. Here, we provide a roundup of the newest and most popular fluorescent ink offerings.
J-Teck USA
J-Teck features J-Eco Flag Nano NF-60 digital inks for digital printers with piezo printheads. These include fluorescent pink and yellow. J-Eco inks are suitable for direct and sublimation printing on polyester fabrics or mixed synthetic fabrics with at least 60 percent polyester.
The inks feature innovative Nanodot Technology, vibrant colors, ink fluidity, and fastness properties. They are intended for fabrics used as banners, flags, outerwear, and sportswear.
“At J-Teck, we review the customer’s product line and assist in helping them select the best fluorescent output possible,” says Chris Cerasoli, business development, VP, J-Teck.
J-Teck also offers Nano Subly Fluor Yellow and Nano Subly Fluor Pink, announced in 2016. These inks are offered at $95 to $120 per liter. Used in sportswear to fashion and signage, they include a high dye concentration in a small particle size to eliminate clogging in printheads.
Kiian Digital
Digistar K-One from Kiian is a digital sublimation ink for transfer printing. It is compatible with Kyocera printheads and intended for banners, fashion, flags, interior decoration, promotional items, and sportswear. Digistar is ideal for use with synthetic fabrics and blended fibers.
Marco Girola, marketing specialist, JK Group, says the K-One drying speed is ideal for long runs, allows process standardization, and reduces operating costs.
The Digistar Hi-Pro is also a digital sublimation ink for transfer printing. It is compatible with Epson printheads and is intended for medium and large format machines.
“Speed, reliability, and reproducibility of the processes over time meet the criteria of industrial productions,” explains Girola. Its color extension and brightness capabilities allow the reproduction of a wide color space during profiling.
Mimaki USA, Inc.
Mimaki offers fluorescent pink and yellow Sb410 and Sb54 ink for dye-sublimation (dye-sub), released in 2016. It is fixed on polyester fabric by sublimation at high temperatures.
Ryosuke Nakayama, manager, textile and apparel business development and marketing, Mimaki, says the company offers fluorescent inks only for its dye-sub printers.
The inks dry quickly and are water based for vibrancy. Mimaki’s fluorescent inks are intended for signage and apparel printing like flags, banners, sportswear, and swimwear.
They utilize a multi-color mode of RIP software and are solely used as spot color and supplements for process color. The ink provides an outside color range of magenta and yellow inks to heighten color brightness.
Roland DGA Corporation
The Roland Texart SBL3 fluorescent dye-sub inks are formulated for dye-sub printing with Roland’s Texart RT-640 or XT-640. Its offering includes fluorescent pink and yellow for a wide gamut. Texart inks are available in four- and eight-color configurations.
“Like all of Roland’s inks, Texart fluorescent dye-sub inks feature high dye-content, so a little goes a long way,” explains Lily Hunter, product manager, textiles and consumables, Roland.
The fluorescent inks combined with process colors create hundreds of fluorescent hues. Roland’s color library includes 375 predefined colors with hundreds of fluorescent colors and soft pastel shades. The inks are water based for fast drying and high dye concentration reduces ink use while retaining vibrancy.
Released in July 2016, the inks are $119 per liter. Roland’s Texart fluorescent inks are intended for apparel, décor, soft signage, and stylish products.
Sawgrass Inc.
Sawgrass offers the SubliJet HD FLEX inks, released in 2017. FLEX inks are water-based sublimation and deliver both fluorescent and expanded gamut color capabilities with a single ink set. Its colors include traditional CMYK, orange, blue, and fluorescent inks in yellow and pink.
The SubliJet inks are designed for Sawgrass’ Virtuoso HD Product Decorating Systems. Inks are compatible with a variety of polyester fabrics or polymer coated rigid media like aluminum panels, wood, tile, mugs, acrylic, glass, slate, and reinforced fiberglass plastic.
Its preconfigured palette of 64 true fluorescents and expanded gamut colors can be loaded directly into Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or CorelDRAW.
Robin Kavanagh, PR manager, Sawgrass, says the colors pop with outstanding print quality on both hard and soft surfaces. “Sawgrass inks are water-based, dispersed sublimation dyes selected specifically for their color and formulated to work with the VJ628 printer,” she adds.
Cartridges are sold $110 MSRP and are offered in single-use cartridges for maximum uptime.
Bold Colors
Fluorescent inks allow print providers to offer glowing and vibrant applications like banners, flags, sportswear, and outerwear. Pink and yellow inks are combined with process colors to create hundreds of fluorescent hues. Currently, there is a great selection available.
Click here to read part one of this exclusive online series, Radical Inks
Click on the link above to get more information on the vendors mentioned in this article.
July2017, Digital Output
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