SportsFactory to showcase customised garment print workflow at Fespa 2018

Dover Digital Printing is piggybacking off World Cup fever in sponsoring a new initiative to showcase customised football jersey printing at Fespa 2018, where it will be joined by Caldera, MS Printing Solutions, JK Group, Monti Antonio and Zund in a SportsFactory stand set-up. The SportsFactory will also house a sports bar, illustrating digital printing technologies, and a pop-up store showcasing digitally printed sports kits and graphics.

“The idea is to allow visitors to experience the entire production process,” said Sebastien Hanssens, VP marketing, Dover Digital Printing. “It will start with the initial design of a shirt and follow the whole process through to printing, cutting and sewing, emerging at the end ready for delivery.” The football jerseys will be printed on an MS Printing Solutions JP4 digital printer using Kiian inks from the JK Group. The MS-JP4 can print up to 180 linear meters per minute, with eight printheads and an ink system that can support custom colours. Once printed, the sublimation heating solution for the jerseys will be a Monti Antonio calendar machine, followed by cutting on Zund finishing equipment. The entire process will be driven by Caldera’s Rip software. The first part of the process will involve the design and customisation of the jerseys using a Web2Print solution. This will be followed by prepress automation to send the print files to the Rip. The Caldera software will then drive and track the print-to-cut process across the printer, calendar and cutter. Finally, the cut pieces will be sewn together on the booth to create the finished articles. During the printing process, Caldera’s StreamLive workflow solution will be used to demonstrate production management and job tracking, as well as providing a range of statistics about the process as it happens, such as details of media usage, ink usage, time of printing and the production schedule.