Israel-based digital style firm Kornit unveils its new Apollo printing system on the Worldwide Textile Equipment Affiliation’s annual convention kicking off Thursday in Milan. The corporate’s chief advertising officer Omer Kulka described the brand new launch as a “full-scale automated manufacturing line for direct-to-garment.”
For Kobi Mann, Kornit’s chief expertise officer, the launch caps off years of painstaking work to develop the automation and streamlining of direct-to-garment, wet-on-wet digital printing. Mann stated Apollo is a “breakthrough” as a result of it’s absolutely digitized and automatic, requiring only one worker to handle the complete operation.
Kornit’s Apollo direct-to-garment digital printing machine is ready to be launched on the ITMA convention in Milan.
Courtesy of Kornit
The Apollo innovation was made doable by the Kornit Max expertise, which Mann’s crew labored on for 4 years and which he refers to because the “Holy Grail” of direct-to-garment printing. Launched in April of 2021, it featured XDi, which delivered new 3D capabilities for high-density graphic ornament in a “single, waste-free digital course of.”
Mann describes the brand new Apollo system as bringing one of the best of the analog display printing and digital worlds into one, absolutely automated unit. It traces its origins to the corporate’s launch in 2003 when Kornit started guided by the inspiration and precept of utilizing pigment fairly than dyes to create colours.
“Pigment is completely different from a dye by the truth that it’s a stable particle, just like the brown of espresso, for instance. It absorbs the sunshine and emits the sunshine, nevertheless it’s a stable—it’s extra sophisticated to create a formulation of that,” Mann advised Sourcing Journal. “The primary advantage of pigment is inside the analog business the place it’s thought of low cost. Within the digital business, it’s thought of very pricey since you’re taking particles that you simply don’t wish to combination and sink inside the materials.”
In addition to effectively bringing pigment printing to the digital world, Apollo delivers excessive quantity, too. The corporate says the Apollo system can churn out 400 clothes per hour for “any type of job.”
With the implementation of the Atlas Max Plus expertise and Apollo system, Kornit is “overlaying the 2 areas of the DTG, roll to roll,” Mann stated.
However with Kornit’s 20-year anniversary at hand, so, too, is the 20-year sundown on a lot of its patents, an space of concern for the corporate that’s headquartered in Israel with places of work in Duesseldorf, Germany, Macclesfield, UK, Shanghai, Kowloon, Hong Kong and Englewood, N.J.
Kornit insists that a lot of these earlier patents don’t expire till 2030 and says it is usually actively defending its patents in opposition to rivals, who see the 20-year benchmark as a inexperienced mild to open use.
Mann stated most of Kornit’s patents expire on the finish of 2030, not 2023. “The patents that have been filed in 2004 certainly will expire quickly, however the patents that cowl our precise expertise have been filed in 2009 once we developed our revolutionary water-based inks and course of for wet-on-wet printing on textiles,” he added.
Mann stated regardless of that 2009 caveat, rivals have sought to pounce on a patent set to show 20 on June 16, simply two days after ITMA wraps up.
“Individuals have been underneath [the 2023 expiration] assumption and went and copied a part of our ideations and distinctive worth proposition,” Mann stated. “We’re keen to guard our IP.”
The corporate says it owns greater than 80 patents with one other 100 provisional or pending.
The primary patent at challenge, titled, “Methodology for picture printing on a darkish textile piece,” is described within the summary as “A way and equipment for coloration printing on a darkish textile piece, the tactic together with the steps of digitally making use of a white masking layer straight onto a textile piece, curing the white masking layer, and digitally printing a coloured picture on stated masking layer.”
The patent was granted on Dec. 16, 2004, however the 20-year clock towards its expiration began ticking on June 16, 2003.
Competitors within the digital garment printing house is projected to accentuate within the coming years. Based on Technavio’s newest market analysis knowledge, the digital textile printing market is anticipated to develop by $2.54 billion from 2023-2027, a rise of 13.5 p.c every year