Ricoh showcases fresh perspectives in digital garment production at FESPA

Helping textile creatives embrace fresh perspectives with new, enhanced, and collaborative technology is the focus of Ricoh’s stand at FESPA.

Manga artist Shinnosuke Uchida brings her imaginative designs to life on Ricoh’s FESPA stand. The specialist in large-scale live painting has worked for major international companies and organisations. During the event, visitors can watch her work live as she shares her own take on the spirit of Japan. In addition, some of her Manga designs are available as T-shirts printed on the stand.

Several technologies on the Ricoh stand are showing for the first time in Europe. They include a forthcoming polyester Direct-to-Garment (DTG) printer that will serve the needs of sportswear textile printers to expand into the production of visually stunning, high-quality polyester garments.

Ricoh also shows a new digital textile printer designed to achieve highly vibrant colours for impactful designs in DTG and Direct to Film (DTF) printing. Attendees will be able to explore a new roll-to-roll DTF production system too. 

All these integrated solutions enable designs to be printed and shipped for local, on-demand applications onto garments. This reduces carbon emissions, including those involved in the textile manufacture itself.

These capabilities are highlighted by Ricoh’s partnership with Fruit of the Loom and Russell Athletic. Ricoh has a showcase where visitors can custom design their own T-shirts and watch them being produced on the stand. 

All of Ricoh’s production solutions are powered by Ricoh’s market-leading printheads. A showcase wall will highlight the class-leading technology’s production flexibility and its key role in driving the textile printing market.

ColorGATE (a Ricoh company) Production server will demonstrate how one workflow platform can achieve colour-accurate and high-quality products.

Eef De Ridder, Vice President, Graphic Communications Group, Ricoh Europe, says: “Opportunities in the garment printing industry are developing very quickly. Innovations in Direct to Garment and Direct to Film Technology present textile printing businesses with compelling production capabilities that respond to leading market and environmental pressures. They enable them to reduce carbon emissions and water usage with local production, offer greater versioning capabilities with responsive short runs and drive creativity with easy-to-use solutions that deliver high-quality results. Our systems and solutions on the show have been developed and enhanced to support operations in this highly demanding market responsively. And our partnership with Fruit of the Loom will demonstrate how responsible and responsive end-to-end digital textile production is achievable.”