Cost effective digital printing

Cost-effective digital printing with attention to detail

Interested in the latest technology in digital printing? Even without expensive printing plates or printing patterns, digital direct printing is possible, which it achieves the better results of textile prints in the high photo quality. This is particularly suitable for single pieces and short runs, because this method allows quick and easy creation.

In this article we show the functionality of digital direct printing. On a checklist, all their peculiarities are summarized to help you decide which benefits you will derive from it.

Preparations

Without costly or expensive preparations, an automated process is seamlessly integrated into the production, so that in a good price / performance ratio of the digital direct printing for large orders and unique items are unrivalled for the customer.

The operation of digital direct printing

If you want to apply digital illustrations and vector graphics true to detail and colourfast on textiles, you have the opportunity to benefit from the advantages of digital direct printing. It works in a similar way to ordinary paper printers, but allows for photo quality prints and fine gradients. Unlike traditional printing processes, there are no additional costs involved in setting up the textile printer so that production can begin immediately upon receipt of the data as it supports common file formats of the software known on the Internet. Once the design is aligned, textiles previously prepared for printing can be printed directly.

Fast and easy finishing of textiles

Due to the perfect ratio of price to performance, this printing process is just right for your small orders. Also, without special time pressure large orders can be carried out quickly when using the digital printing. Promotional items, as well as clothing and bags, are printed immediately after receipt of the order, so you get the ordered goods delivered after only a few hours after receiving your order. With digital direct printing, many complex motifs can be realized without additional effort, which can not be achieved with conventional printing processes.

The finished textiles are washable in the washing machine up to 40° C due to the particularly tear-resistant imprint. Thus, the textile will shine even after many years of wearing still as new. In the production no presettings are necessary, that you can also create small series cost-effective. Digital direct printing is one of the most widely used methods for enhancing its textiles with photos and motifs. Interesting color gradients and outstanding motifs irritate the technology and make every product a real eye-catcher.

Powerful Brother printers are often used for textile printing. They allow a particularly true-to-original contour sharpness and color intensity. Each imprint is fixed in a second step using a drying tunnel. This ensures that the required light increases the wash resistance and thus improves its elasticity. The result may be reminiscent of a screen printing, but in this case has significantly filigree color gradients and contours.

Thanks to its innovative technology, the color result radiates a special shine even with dark textiles. Various file formats, such as tiff, jpg and png, can be printed in any structure and hue without further editing. The manufacture of the textiles themselves is ecological and sustainable, since when used in the selection of printing materials on the application of harmful chemicals is omitted. This not only protects nature, but also your skin.

Preparation the files

Textile printers can handle almost all file formats. You should be careful to choose at least a resolution of 300 dpi. This prevents motive from being rendered "pixelated", which would otherwise make the expression on the T-shirt look weird. You should also use a transparent background. So not only completely dark or bright, so that no rectangular edge is created and the motif shines in its full beauty.

In its particularly elaborate production of flex and Flockdruck is one of the most commonly used Plottdruckverfahren. Specially cut films provide a fascinating look when using flexographic printing, even if the photo print is sometimes velvety and matt.

Small and medium transfer printing

For small and medium runs of transfer printing, flex and flock printing is of particular interest. For textiles made of complicated materials for printing, the transfer printing impresses with its brilliant colors and longevity.

For motives with few color areas, the flex and flock printing is therefore particularly suitable. Even highly detailed motifs are cut at high volumes of precise machines. The cutting plotter will prepare a special foil for each color layer, which will then be "latticed" by hand. An optimal cut of the desired motif is created, which is applied to the product with the printing press to produce the final product.

Golden era of pinball machines

A pinball machine is an electro mechanical coin operated arcade game. It works by the principle of scoring points by directing one or more metal balls on a game board separated from the player by a window. The main goal is to achieve a high score. The secondary goal is to play as long as possible without the ball leaving game board and possibly obtaining extra balls and win a replay. This type of game was a great success from the 1950s to the late 1990s, to the point of entering the pop culture. Many cafes and restaurants offered them to their customers. There were also specialized gaming rooms known as arcades

History

The pinball as we know today derived from the French game Bagatelle around 1770 and the Japanese billiard, it was fully developed in Chicago in the 1930s by mechanics and electricians who were unemployed because of the financial crisis of 1929. By gambling for money it was banned in several major US cities soon after. Cash was later replaced by replays to make pinball legal. The electro mechanic was replaced by electronic (solid state) in 1976. Pinball suffered a decline in the 1980s as a result of the rise of video games. And major manufacturers like Williams, who had previously acquired Bally, went out of business in 1999 and Gottlieb in 1996, leaving Stern as the only manufacturer.

Score

Counting of points with the pinball machine is rather particular and arbitrary. The scores of very old machines were counted in hundreds of thousands points which were displayed by lamps signaling a row of 100,000 and was left to the user to add them. The arrival of electro mechanical wheel counters brought the scores down to hundreds of points, with a lamp lighting a number "1" at the top of the 3 digits when it was above 999.

In the 1970s, with the arrival of electronic displays, the scores began to count thousands or tens of thousands of points. This "inflation" continued until the mid-1990s, when several games allowed up to millions of points to get a free game. Quite recently the counting of points returned to more reasonable values.

Ben Daglish passed away

The Commodore 64 community mourns Ben Daglish who passed away October 1st 2018.

Ben was well known to many who spent their teens in front of their 8bit computer as composer from video games. Tunes like Last Ninja, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Bombo or Bulldog remain classics to this day. You can download many of his music in original C64 format my SID download web page.

He was born in London in England and later moved to Sheffield. Besides the breadbox he also composed music on other computers from the 1980s, including the Amstrad CPC and the Sinclair Spectrum. He was 52 years old.

Ben's famous Trap demo which blew away many Commodore 64 users in 1986.