The Xaar Aquinox allows users to print ‘bolder and brighter’
Xaar is the world’s leading independent manufacturer of piezo-based drop-on-demand inkjet technologies. The company’s printheads are trusted in industrial markets around the globe as the most effective way to lay down precise volumes of inks and fluids with absolute pin-point accuracy time after time. In an interview with Fibre2Fashion, Xaar’s Head of Product Management Justin Noble discusses the recently launched ground-breaking aqueous printhead.
What is the size of the global market for inkjet printers? At what rate is it growing?
Digital textile printing continues to demonstrate strong growth opportunities for companies throughout the textile and printing supply chain. According to Smithers, overall global growth in digital textile printing volumes will increase by 13.9 per cent from 2021 to 2026, and is predicted to hit a market share of ten per cent from six per cent over the same period.
While still relatively small, inkjet is the key to driving this growth in market share, and is the technology predominantly used to print synthetic fibres, natural fibres, and blends. OEMs are therefore increasing the availability of printers to the textile sector, and the launch of our revolutionary printhead – the Xaar Aquinox – delivers exceptional reliability, creativity, and sustainability for printing aqueous fluids, helping to grow the market.
What are the advantages of using water-based printing? How viable is it commercially compared to conventional inks?
The Xaar Aquinox allows users to print ‘bolder and brighter’, offering improved precision and versatility across textile print applications through ability to jet highly pigmented and viscous water-based inks. High Laydown Technology increases the drop size that the printhead can jet, which is especially useful for printing textiles, highly absorbent substrates, or thick film coatings, plus a broad range of aqueous fluids and viscosities to simplify processes and reduce a machine’s carbon footprint.
Combined with Xaar’s Ultra High Viscosity Technology, the Aquinox printhead can also add more creativity to these wider substrate applications, allowing for more creative finishes, by extending the range of fluids and colour gamut available using larger particles and heavier pigment loading.
Whereas the inkjet printing of white inks has traditionally caused blockages and nozzle outs, the Xaar Aquinox with TF Technology has delivered proven improvement in dealing with whites and heavily pigmented inks, reducing maintenance, improving up-time and reliability, to produce the vibrancy and results needed in textile printing, particularly on dark substrates.
Sustainability is also improved through water-based printing and through the Aquinox enabling higher pigment loading and more viscous fluids the amount of water needed in inks can be reduced, saving resources both initially and through reducing the amount of energy needed in drying materials post printing.
What applications do you foresee?
Water based printing, and the Xaar Aquinox, offer value to many sectors and the textile industry is no exception. Opportunities to maximise uptime and productivity in applications such as direct to garment printing will become apparent, particularly where dark substrates require a base layer of high opacity white ink to be laid down before any decoration. The heavy pigment-based fluids are difficult to handle and print with incumbent technology. However this is an area where Aquinox excels and will dramatically improve reliability. The excellent productivity and laydown capability of Aquinox also compliments this, with more ink, at higher opacity, being able to be delivered in much less time than current printheads allow.
Industrial roll to roll scanning machines producing home furnishing material and fabrics for apparel will also benefit from the Aquinox. Currently, managing the open time of nozzles is a challenge for existing printers, with humidity and environmental conditions needing to be closely controlled to ensure print quality and reliability are maintained. Aquinox offers a step change in open time as Xaar’s unique TF Technology keeps ink in constant recirculation, even in the nozzle. This significantly increases the operating window for users and reduces the burden on closely controlling a printing environment.
How would you describe the market for printheads in Europe?
Whilst Asia is the dominant producer of digitally printed textiles on a volume basis, Western Europe continues to hold second position, driven particularly by Italy as the world’s fashion epicentre, and leading digital printing equipment manufacturers. Especially, since COVID, there has been an increase in the number of European companies purchasing digital textile printers, and we are seeing a demand for printheads that can cope with a wider variety of aqueous fluids – in particular pigmented inks – at which the Xaar Aquinox excels.
Which are your major markets globally?
As a global business we supply printheads to manufacturers around the world. While Europe is our largest geographic region, China and Asia are also key markets for Xaar, particularly in the textile sector. Our local representation and support in each region ensures that we meet the needs of our OEMs in developing the latest printers for inkjet applications.
How do Xaar products contribute to sustainable manufacturing?
Key amongst the new Xaar Aquinox printhead’s advantages is the contribution it can make to businesses in the delivery of more environmentally friendly print and production. With reduced energy consumption and water usage (both in production and drying times), and especially in textile printing, this can equate to as much as a 60 per cent saving in energy and water over similar analogue printing processes.
Traditionally during periods of non-printing, many printheads have required high humidity and need to be continuously jetting to ensure print quality. Xaar’s TF Technology ink recirculation gives improved open time and latency, reducing maintenance and unnecessarily wasted ink, saving energy and resources, thus maximising the total cost of ownership.
Similarly, the improved robustness of the Xaar Aquinox extends its print life and avoids costly replacement of printheads, once more minimising waste and environmental impact.
How is your company supporting the concept of circular economy?
This year we have set out our Sustainability Roadmap to 2030 which is based on four key pillars – Environment, People, Innovation and Community. Within this we have set the target of making the Group a carbon neutral inkjet manufacturer in 2022 through offsetting, and an aim to achieve complete carbon neutrality by 2030.
In addition, as part of our innovation pillar, we have successfully trialled the use of recycled Polylactic Acid (PLA) filaments generated from returned and waste PLA as part of the circular economy. These are supplied in 100 per cent plastic-free sustainable packaging, with easy to recycle cardboard spools and are the first stage in the use of biodegradable structural parts in the manufacture of Xaar products.
Sustainability is no longer just a part of our agenda, it ‘is’ the agenda, and will additionally improve both our operational and commercial performance.
How would you describe the demand for printheads, and inkjet printers post pandemic?
While the pandemic has undoubtedly challenged the global supply chain, we are still seeing growing demand for inkjet printheads across a wide variety of market sectors. It is an enabling technology that has multiple applications, and with the Aquinox printhead we can now deliver the reliability in aqueous printing that many manufacturers have been looking for. As such we anticipate that demand will continue to grow, and for Xaar to be key to delivering the printheads and technologies in the use of inkjet.
What are the top three market trends you see in digital imaging?
We would say flexibility, reliability and sustainability are the key trends that are driving growth in the use of inkjet technologies in the textiles sector. When developing our aqueous technology, the market need was clear – delivery of a truly reliable, robust printhead that can print a much wider range of aqueous fluids including high viscosity and high pigment loading. And that is what we have done with the launch of the Aquinox.
What new innovations and technologies are you working towards especially for the textile industry?
Obviously, it’s always difficult to talk about confidential development projects and the work we have underway with our textile OEMs. However, as we have already highlighted, a key area of focus is the opportunity to print ‘bolder and brighter’ by offering the capability to jet highly pigmented and viscous fluids.
The Xaar Aquinox will help break new ground, due to its high compatibility with a wide range of fluids, even acidic inks. Here, Xaar’s technology is creating the opportunity for ink manufacturers to reformulate their inks and fluids to deliver richer, more vibrant colours as well as deliver greater functionality. Also, the Aquinox’s high native resolution at 720dpi will enable very fine detail for fashion fabrics to be printed with deep penetration of colours.
Having the ability to jet fluids with much higher viscosity – up to 100cP – will ensure digital and inkjet printing delivers the reliability, performance, creative and sustainable print that textile businesses and consumers now demand and deliver the water-based inkjet textile print revolution.
Please tell us about your water-based printing technology.
Our revolutionary printhead, the Xaar Aquinox, delivers exceptional reliability, creativity, and sustainability for printing aqueous fluids. The Aquinox is the latest development from Xaar’s ImagineX platform, and our aQ Power Technology provides a radically new approach to the reliable jetting of water-based fluids, delivering a truly transformational industrial printhead for textiles and any other sector that benefits from the use of aqueous fluids.
The changing landscape of the textile market makes the Xaar Aquinox printhead perfect for many applications. Simplified processes, exceptional print speeds and a wide array of customisation options, places the Xaar Aquinox at the very forefront of efficiency and versatility. Speeds of over 100m/min can be achieved, and a high native resolution of 720dpi and firing frequency of up to 48kHz, enables high fluid laydown for maximum productivity.
