720627Development of a digital printing technology demonstrator for the additive manufacturing of textilesClosedGRD Development of PrototypeInnovate UKThe production of textiles usually involves applying colour, decoration or coating. These processes currently use wet chemistry methods that generate huge waste during manufacture. In 2008 global textile production was estimated at 60BN Kg of fabric. This equated to 1,074BN kWh of electricity used or 132 million cubic metres of coal and between 6 – 9 trillion litres of water. In addition, the fashion industry creates tremendous amounts of waste in fabrics and clothing that go “out-of-fashion” rapidly. This results in financial losses for retailers and manufacturers in unsold fashion items as well as mountains of waste in unwanted textile goods. What’s needed is a low-cost, reliable method of decorating fabrics that can be used to economically manufacture the right quantity of fashion goods, closer to point-of-sale – without the huge environmental costs of current methods. In our prototype development project we plan to develop a digital additive method to disrupt the market - enabling process speeds close to current production methods at comparable cost. The business opportunity for us is to move digital printing from niche to mainstream technology for textile production lines for dyeing, decorating and coating using traditional materials. If successful, this will create an industrial printing system that enables the inkjet printer industry to respond to tremendous demand in the fashion industry. Today, less than 1% of global textile output is printed using digital processes. By achieving process speeds comparable to conventional methods, but without the tremendous waste and environmental costs, we expect our innovation to make a major step change to a market for hardware and ink sales for inkjet colour continuous feed textile printers growing to over £1Bn in value by 2018 – while positioning the UK at the forefront of digital textile printing technology.