Hey guys, my name is Nora and I'm from Printful's marketing team.
Today we're filming at our fulfillment center in Riga, Latvia,
and joining me I have a very special guest from Germany, Kamil from Kornit.
Hello, my name is Kamil.
I've worked as an application specialist for Kornit for four and a half years.
Cool.
So we're going to talk a little bit about Kornit today.
For those of you who don't know, we use Kornit machines to print all of our direct-to-garment apparel.
So think t-shirts, sweatshirts, tank tops, that kind of thing.
We'll be talking about the printing process and going over a live demo.
But before we dive in, Kamil why don't you tell me a little bit about Kornit,
the origin of the company, your brand values, and accomplishments.
Kornit was founded 2002, about 17 years ago.
We started as an ink manufacturing company.
We are a solution provider.
We develop ink, our liquids, everything that is part of the process, including the machines and software.
What specific solutions do you bring to the market with Kornit?
Our specific solution is the one-step process solution.
Meaning that we can take almost any garment that absorbs water,
that's one of the key attributes you need,
and print directly onto it.
We applyour spray, our fixation agent, which is our pretreatment, and it's inside the machine.
It takes an extremely short amount of time to fulfill a product once it is sold.
It gives you extreme versatility and flexibility.
So, where do you see the future of ecommerce going, and how does Kornit fit into that bigger vision?
The whole fashion industry and the whole development
changes from pre-producing large amounts of garments, large amounts of designs,
which then just stands still, and waiting in retail shops.
We want to give customers like you,
the opportunity to print on demand what is actually needed and already purchased.
For example, if you have a beautiful design
you can have all the variations of colors, all versions of sizes without the need to have a huge stock.
Because you can can offer it to your end customers.
Everybody can express themselves with their design,
and with our technology we make it possible without any additional effort.
Yeah and I think we see that as well.
Customers are avoiding the big-box retailers,
and they're really going for more unique small businesses, interesting design concepts.
So, I think you guys fit in great there.
Alright, so how have Kornit machines and printing models evolved over time
since your creation 17 years ago?
Well, we started with a classic four-color machine just for white t-shirts.
That was a long time ago.
Since then the continuous evolution Has lead us into into an industrial state.
From a single pallet solution, we went to machines with dual pallets.
While one pallet was printing, the other was prepared for a second job.
Then we had dual pallet machines with separated bridges.
So one can print white and the other can print color.
We have overlapping print times, which ends creating more efficient and continuously better production flow.
Sometimes customers might notice a faint vinegar smell,
when they first get their packages that comes out after washing.
But that smell comes from the fixation agent.
So can you tell us a little bit more what that does and why we need it?
Basically, we need a fixation agent because you're printing in a wet-on-wet situation.
We apply a water-based ink drop directly onto the garment.
If you don't use pre-coating, which is in our case a water-based agent,
it would directly be drawn into the garment.
We're still evolving it, and continuously developing our inks.
The latest version of a fixation agent doesn't have this vinegar smell anymore,
because we've changed a couple of ingredients.
In the end, these small stains sometimes are just a side effect of the actual garment manufacturing before.
Sometimes a chemical reaction can appear, but it usually comes off after the first wash.
I mean if you think about it, we're just jetting a small ink drop onto a liquid surface and it just stays in place,
which is a little bit impressive.
I think so. Yeah, I agree.
How does the color profile of your print file affect the end result?
We have two different worlds.
We have on one side the digital world, meaning that's the actual artwork.
Every single color has a certain value, and we want to transfer this value
into the color space of our printing machines.
We have machines with four colors plus white.
We have machines with six colors plus white.
The more colors we have the more you can actually reproduce.
In terms of color consistency,
a good and adequate profile is the best way to go.
It just gives you control over your reproduction.
Why is it important to order a color swatch before you create or print your designs?
The way colors are displayed on the screen and printed are like two different worlds.
I mean, it's like Venus and Mars.
You can't directly compare one to the other.
RGB or monitor colors are light-emitting colors.
The more energy I apply, the brighter the color is going to be.
In printing, it's the opposite.
The more pigment or more color I add, the darker the color gets.
There are definitely always differences.
One very easy way to overcome this, and judge the design by the actual result of the of the garment,
is by using color swatches.
In this case, you already know what perception
and the actual reproduction of the color is going to be on that particular garment.
It also makes a huge difference if you're printing
on a t-shirt with optical brighteners, a super white t-shirt, a thin or thick white t-shirt.
So even that changes the appearance of colors.
So switching topics a little bit now. Can you tell us about white underbase?
What is it? Why do we need it?
White under base is mandatory if you want to print on dark or colorful garments.
Printing on white t-shirts is easy, it's straightforward.
It's just applying some inks and that's basically it, because they already define the color.
If you for example have a yellow t-shirt, and you want to print cyan on top,
and you don't use a white under base, the appearance would be green.
Cyan plus yellow equals green, because we're absorbing different parts of it.
We want to block the garment color to leave all the colored ink on top,
so the perception of that color remains as it is.
Depending on the garment, the white layer needs to be thicker or thinner,
and especially in semi-transparent parts we want to utilize the actual garment color.
So a white under base is absolutely mandatory.
There's literally no way around it.
So how does the machine know when it's supposed to apply a white under base?
The machine looks at the original input image,
and judges by the luminosity of every single pixel in every single color.
The luminosity is the value of the actual lightness of the color.
The lighter a color is, the more white I need to make it visible.
For example on a black t-shirt, I actually don't need a white under base for black ink on top.
So now you guys know about Kornit, who they are, who Kamil is.
We've talked a lot about the technical side of things, white under base, fixation agent.
Now it's time go see this all in action.
We're going to take a look at a live demo, and show you how it actually works in practice.
So let's head over?
We're standing here next to one of our Kornit printers.
Before we actually print a shirt and show you guys how that looks,
Kamil, why don't you tell us: what are what are we looking at here?
Sure. I'd be delighted.
Just to give you a little close-up overview I'll lift the hood.
We can do it because it's not printing.
This is the core part of the machine.
Below are print heads and our secondary ink tanks.
What's special about this machine is that we have the white and the colors on the one bridge.
In that case, we can print one job after the other.
On different systems we have split them into two bridges, but that one's totally fine.
What makes this generation special, it's the R-series,
is the recirculation of the print heads.
We have two secondary ink tanks,
and we continuously circulate the ink through the print head and though the tanks.
Is that good in terms of ink efficiency lower waste, that kind of thing?
Lower waste and lower starvation of the print heads.
We're using water-based ink, and every time the print heads are exposed to the air they start drying out.
We want to prevent that.
So this is why we keep them circulating and rotating.
The second advantage is sedimentation, because we have a solid pigment inside a liquid solution.
If you've ever seen a glass of water with sand inside,
after some time it settles down, but we keep it continuously going.
You mentioned water-based inks, tell me about that.
Is it better for the environment?
It is way better for the environment.
The thing is that with pigments you get the best brightness in terms of the color reproduction,
and they're water-based because we want to have a sustainable solution.
Everything that is part of our process is eco-friendly.
It's certified for direct skin contact even for newborns and children.
So if it's certified for that it is not that harmful.
So what else can you tell me here?
Are there any other fun facts?
One of the most interesting things is located a little bit here at the back.
You just need to come around.
This is our spray system,
and that one applies on the fly our fixation and preparation directly onto the garment.
So the pallet is moving all the way back in, it is spraying,
wiping off, and then it immediately starts printing.
I guess we can actually print something. Exactly.
The pallet is now going in.
So this is the fixation agent that's going on now? Exactly.
Right now, we've already applied the spray and fixation, and we're applying now the white under base.
That one is critical and mandatory just to get vivid colors on top.
Otherwise, like we said before, yellow shirt, cyan color, it would just fade away.
Especially on a black shirt, you just can't see it.
The good thing is that while we're printing and the color passes,
the machine is just waiting, and timing itself before it starts the second print.
We have an overlap in time.
We always have the same time difference between spray and actual printing.
Usually the machine waits for the operator and not the other way around.
So this is very intuitive, it already knows on its own what it's doing.
We are working based on setups and templates.
We can just assign different setups for different garments or even different design styles,
if we have small ones or full-sized print photorealistic images.
It's just for continuous production.
It's for industrial productions. So the more it runs, the better it is.
Yes, so then we can keep up with customer demand.
We can fulfill more orders, and be even more efficient.
The good thing is that after the print is finished we need to put it into a dryer.
Okay, and why do we need to do that?
That is actually the curing.
The fixation agent is not actually bonding the ink, it is stabilizing it while it is printing.
The curing and the bonding of the ink to the garment happens inside the dryer, just by applying heat and time.
How long does the drying process usually take?
For dark garments minimum seven minutes, between seven and nine.
It's different for light versus dark garments? Why's that?
On light garments, we have one layer less,
because we're printing only the color ink.
So it's the underbase that adds an extra layer that needs more time?
Exactly, and we are using way less fixation.
We need this extra time to evaporate all the liquid and all the fixation.
That's basically it.
So here is the finished product. Why don't we grab it from the dryer?
Always just be careful, it's still a little bit warm,
because the dryer is drying the shirt at 160 degrees.
But it's still less than the pizza in the oven.
The good thing is, that one is now ready for shipment.
So there's no additional step needed.
Just fold it, pack it,and ship it, I guess.
Exactly, yeah.
One of the greatest things about our technology is the whole fixation,
which was massive and it's now completely gone.
Yeah, the garment was like soaking when we took it off. Okay, and now it's completely dry.
It's completely gone, because mostly it was just water, which just evaporates in the drying process.
So that's a very good advantage.
Yeah, and the colors look great too. They're nice and bright.
Absolutely, and also the amount details.
That's what digital printing is.
We're just printing a square with fine details. That's what you would like to see in a retail store for example.
Exactly, yeah. This is retail ready.
So here it is a finished t-shirt. The design looks great. The colors pop.
Thank you so much for showing us how this printer works and walking us through the whole process.
It was a pleasure indeed.
And thank you all for watching. I hope this was super informative and useful for you.
If you liked this video then feel free to leave a like,
subscribe to our channel, and follow all of Kornit's channels as well.
They have amazing content.
If you have any more questions about printing or the printing process,
then feel free to leave a comment and we will answer.