KYOTO, Japan – February 2024 – Kyocera Corporation (President: Hideo Tanimoto) today announced FOREARTH, a new inkjet textile printer that aims to eliminate virtually all water usage from fabric printing. We expect this printer to contribute to eliminating printing-related water pollution, which has long been an issue in the textile and apparel industries.
Development Background
Traditional analog textile printing consumes a large amount of water, especially in the washing and steaming processes, and wastewater pollution due to fabric printing is a long-standing issue around the world. In addition, waste resulting from the mass disposal of overstocked clothing is also an environmental concern, and the textile and apparel industries are under pressure to take immediate action toward alleviating this issue. Kyocera developed our new inkjet textile printer, FOREARTH, that combines patented inkjet, ink, and printing equipment technology to contribute to solving these environmental problems.
Key features include:
- Water Free Concept – Dramatically reduces water usage in textile printing.
- Creative Free – Proprietary pigment ink realizes both soft hand-feel prints and high fastness in a wide range of fabrics.
- Location Free – Textile printing does not rely on water resources, so it supports optimized production volumes and optimized manufacturing location setting and contributes to the reduction of logistic costs, time, and excess inventories.
Water-Free Concept
In general, textile printing uses dye ink*1 and requires a large amount of water for the pre and post-treatment processes, such as steaming and washing. FOREARTH is an All-in-One printing system that uses new proprietary pigment ink*2, pre-treatment liquid, and finishing agent, which are constantly discharged in the same sequence from the inkjet head. This system eliminates the pre-and post-processes required of conventional dye printing and reduces the water consumption of textile printing by 99%*3. Also, this new printing solution contributes to reducing energy consumption and CO2 emissions because it does not need large-scale equipment used for the pre and post-treatment processes of textile printing.
*1 Dye ink: Dye with fine paint particles dissolved in water, which is printed by impregnating fabric with color
*2 Pigment ink: Dye with large paint particles that do not dissolve in water, which is printed by sticking to the surface of the textile
*3 Based on KYOCERA research (2022)
*Reference about 153L water usage of dye analog textile: Kujanpää, M. & Nors, M. (2014). Environmental performance of future digital textile printing. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. VTT Customer Report Vol. VTT-CR-04462-14
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