The inks, which will be commercially available from the first week of December, will be demonstrated at ITMA, the textile and garment machinery exhibition, which will take place in Milan from 12 to 19 November.
Mimaki said the new neon fluorescent inks, which are available in yellow and pink, are suitable for fashion, sportswear, swimwear and shoes and are specially developed for use in the low-volume, high-quality sublimation paper transfer market.
The TS300P-1800 was launched at Fespa in Cologne in May and is specifically designed for digital low-cost production of high-value applications.
The manufacturer said the combination of this machine with the new inks opens up a new range of possibilities for textile printers and garment manufacturers.
“Fluorescent colours are in increasingly high demand in the fashion and sportswear markets. We introduced yellow and pink because with this combination it can also make green,” said Mimaki EMEA general marketing manager Mike Horsten.
“With these new neon inks, designers and garment manufacturers will be able to extend the potential of digital printing solutions to the production of high quality running clothes and other applications that are personalised or have unique designs and need to stand out for safety or fashion purposes.”
Horsten said there has been a demand for fluorescent inks for a while but that it had proved problematic to achieve consistent quality until now.
“There have been other manufacturers in the market that came up with fluorescent inks but the stability of the fluorescent was too weak to really produce big quantities of garments,” said Horsten.
“For the very first time these new inks will allow production of such bespoke, quality products on a much larger scale.
“As more textile manufacturers learn about these new inks and the quality and capability of digital printing for textiles, we expect to see demand really take off.”
Mimaki will also show a new concept printer, the 3.2m TS500P-3200, at ITMA, which will use the manufacturer’s SB410 inks.
Horsten said the device is planned to officially launch at Fespa Digital 2016 in Amsterdam in March, with commercial availability expected soon after the show.
“This is a highly productive digital textile printer, which will deliver beautiful prints for wider textile requirements such as curtains, bed covers and more.
“I also believe the biggest part of the market will be soft signage, and we will present the machine in that way at Fespa.”
The firm will also show its new 1.8m roll-to-roll machine, the TX300P-1800, for the first time at ITMA.
One TX300P-1800 will run with TP400 pigment inks for direct printing while a second machine will run with Dd400 Direct Disperse dye inks.
