Digital textile printer manufacturer MTEX America showcased its new MTEX Blue dye-sublimation printer for the first time in North America at the SGIA Expo in Atlanta, Georgia November 4th – 6th. The MTEX Blue with disperse inks for dye-sublimation printing was launched last month in Europe and this was the first time the “groundbreaking machine” has been shown in the U.S. It offers “superb quality at great speeds with punchy, vibrant colours and inline fixation.” Like all MTEX digital textile printers, it has heat fixation built in, so print and heat fixing (sublimation) is completed in one process, eliminating the need for a separate calendar. As an all-in-one solution, it can print and finish at a speed of 550 square feet per hour.
The MTEX Blue is a direct-to-textile polyester fabric printer with four CMYK Panasonic heads with variable-drop technology and adjustable head height to accommodate different thicknesses and types of fabrics. It can print at up to 1,080 dpi. The machine is ideal for several printing applications – flags, front-lit and back-lit displays, events and exhibitions, and all soft signage applications as well as materials for interior soft furnishings and fire-retardant polyester fabrics.
“This all-in-one, affordable dye-sub printer will take the market by storm, enabling sign makers and display graphic professionals an easy, efficient and most cost-effective route into the textile printing market,” said Eloi Ferreira, CEO of MTEX America. Clem Sison, COO of MTEX America, added: “We were very pleased to offer the MTEX Blue printer at SGIA. With award-winning Mimaki technology at the heart of the system, the printer is an ideal option for companies looking for a turnkey textile solution. The Blue offers a true fabric printing solution with no compromise to the integrity of the material after continuous use. With disperse dyes, the inks are essentially ‘bonded’ into the fibres through the heat fixation (sublimation) process. So you can wash the fabrics, fold, handle and re-wash if needed, with absolutely no degradation of the image. Bruising, marking, creasing and cracking are eliminated completely, due to the image becoming part of the fabric, compared to sitting on top of it,” he added.
