At WTiN’s Innovate Textile & Apparel virtual trade show, electronics company Barbieri is showcasing its latest colour measurement solution for digital textile printing.
Titled the Spectro LFP qb Textile Edition, the instrument allows automatic measurement with high precision and repeatability on ‘any kind of textile and fabric’.
Barbieri explains: “In order to print colour accurately, digital printers must be linearised and profiled, and process control is needed to monitor colour output. For this, colour measuring devices – spectrophotometers – are fundamental.
“But everyone involved in digital textile printing knows the fabric to be measured must be fixed in some way, on an even surface with white backing,” the company explains. “During measurements, the textile shifts and wrinkles arise. [The chart distorts] in some areas. The optics get clogged by textile fibres. These difficulties make it impossible to measure fabrics in an automated way, and if in some way measurements have been received, they are not accurate and repeatable.”
Thus, the Spectro LFP qb Textile Edition enables the textile to be fixed and measured automatically ‘with the highest precision and repeatability’.
“To ensure this, new textile holders have been created that fix the chart to be measured, while the optics have been equipped with an air blowing system, which prevents textile fibres from contaminating the optics,” Barbieri says.
According to the company, the most important new feature is its automatic patch recognition. The sensing unit (camera), in combination with special software algorithms, detects the centre of each patch of the chart to be measured.
“Once the coordinates of every patch are known, the device starts to measure – thanks to this, distorted charts will be measured fully and automatically.”
The measurement tool is also able to measure fluorescent inks, which it notes are becoming ‘rampant’ throughout the textile printing sector.
For more information on the Spectro LFP qb Textile Edition, visitors can find Barbieri at the company’s digital booth here.
