A Wide Format Digital Printing with A Variety of
Applications for Different Industries

The Same Technique But Different Applications
Sometimes, there does not seem to be anything in common among outdoor advertising, photos, ties, architectural interiors, doors, interior materials and packing materials, But all have been produced using digital printing technology. Though these products are specifically produced by the same technology, end users for them are completely different and consequently, they are not able to be involved in the same industry. This was the major barrier that has prevented the digital printing technology from expanding into a specific industry and from being amalgamated. The same technique but different applications on each industrial area give a hint on a lot of information that can be exchanged. In the close future, digital printing technology is likely to help each industry to share the same information. And furthermore, this happening will be more active and progressive. Though it is a printer that plays a major role in digital printing process, there are other necessary processes before and after printing to enhance printing quality. Before printing job, a variety of input and design tools should be required. And after printing, the finishing work is required to make sure printing durability. Consequently, digital printing is something more than 멲 digital printer.?And digital printing process means all the steps dealing with a variety of equipments and materials before and after print, including input, design and finishing processing.

Beyond a Sign Industry
Digital printing technology is being applied to other areas beyond a sign industry. Two of the most remarkable areas are digital textile printing and photo image production. As for photo industry, a wide format digital printing is increasingly used because of customers?desire of creating photo images in larger size and a digital cameras popularization with its price down. This is the same case with the digital textile printing. Many agree that, though it is still in an early stage of development, digital textile printing is becoming popular in global markets, and it has an endless development potential. Recently, a wide format digital printing technology is intruding into digital textile printing area and establishes more common areas between them. Under these circumstances, worldwide wide format digital printer manufacturers and textile printing providers started the push to develop and introduce a wide format digital printer for printing graphics on textiles individually or through joint venture. In other words, they strive to figure out how to use existing textile inks for application on a wide format digital printing. Such efforts are going on in several countries including Korea, Israel, USA, Japan, Germany, Belgium, Australia and others. The digital textile printing technology has been commercialized in these countries. Some wide format digital printing providers have already created new markets by using specific textile printers. More companies have begun to print added value graphics on cloth materials such as flags and banners with digital textile printers.

Technical Development Requirement
A great number of companies are producing and introducing wide format digital printers for application on textile materials, but they are not widely used on the global market. The critical challenge is productivity and cost. The printer can print 10m2 graphics per hour and the price of materials and ink is dear. The reason that these materials is so expensive is that they should be pre-processed to absorb inks on the surface of materials unlike the conventional way of printing textile. Moreover, some materials require back paper on the back as well as pre-processing, which pushes up the cost. In addition, the types of fabrics used in textile production are so numerous that it is almost impossible to pre-treat all of them for sale. It is about 20 types of textile materials at most, though the number slightly varies depending on textile material provider. So the companies who own digital textile printers are eager to equip themselves with facilities that are able to pre-process as well as steam, wash on whatever fabrics customers want. It is technically impossible that a textile design studio and a lab have all the systems to dispose wastewater after post-processing.

Larger and Bigger
A photo industry is another area that is expanding more common field with a wide format digital printing. It means that photos on an album started to get out of it. Such thing is not quite new. That is why photos are getting larger and bigger. Large photos can no longer be placed on albums. Not on albums, a larger photo could be hung on the walls in a frame and sometimes used for signs as outdoor advertising. Some photos with high artistic value can be saved on CDs and sold. Most of the photos were only developed on photo papers before. Of course, they could be digitally printed, however, currently a printed material is going through a digital printing technology. So, photo applications should be involved in digital printing technology. Especially when using a wide format digital printer, photo images are printed on a variety of different media including a paper, a canvas, a backlit film and vinyl etc. Even, they can be engraved with a router machine. In the case of using photo CDs and DVDs, the most strength of digitalized image is to store a large volume of photos and show colorful images with R, G, B color spectrums on a computer monitor. As the photo industry is also digitalized, the new market with an application of digital printing technology is activated and enhanced in the close future.

Easy To Work with Digital Printing Technology
A photo image that has already been digitalized is ready to be proceeded. It can be re-touched and mediately, even it is able to be worked on the words program on a computer. It can also be directly printed anytime via a printer connected to a computer whatever size you want. These days, the most notable trend is that a wide format inkjet printer is emerging as a tool to print photo images in a format larger than A3 size. In addition, digitalized photo images can be forwarded everywhere via communication around the clock. One can send and receive digital images and upload the file on a server to let designated person share it via the Internet or PC communications. Such digitalization has more invisible impacts than visible ones on the market. One of the most significant benefits from digitalization is to save money and reduce production time, which finally enhance work productivity. A hardware and software for digital printing applications are being quickly improved in terms of performance to provide new value to a variety of industries while their prices are decreasing over time. Those who owned digital printing systems can enjoy the benefits from digital printing technology, and have opportunities to expand their applications without additional investments. In reality, we can easily notice that most of the art works displayed in recent photo-related shows were printed with a wide format digital printer.