While the end consumer mainly focuses on the quality of the final product, digital printing often allows you to achieve a higher quality for these consumers. Nevertheless, printing companies still invest in rotary screen printers. There are a few reasons for this. 

First of all, there are the economical reasons. As a digital printing company, it is generally difficult to compete with companies that use rotary screen printing. That’s because rotary screen printing enables you to print larger volumes faster and cheaper. That is why long print runs are still being printed with rotary screen printing. Also, striving for the highest quality with digital printing is an expensive investment, especially if this high quality is not an absolute necessity. Take, for example, low-end fashion with few colors. It is much cheaper to make this with rotary screen printing, especially because mass production is much cheaper and faster with rotary technologies.

Besides the economical reasons, companies still invest in rotary machines because there are some technical differences between the two types of printing. For example, some textiles can’t be printed digitally. These will have to be printed conventionally. This also applies if dyes have to penetrate the fiber completely; if the print has to be identical on both sides of the fabric then digital printing is not possible. Another technological difference is that certain applications, such as pigment printing, are quite expensive in digital textile printing because of the high ink consumption in combination with a costly production method for the inks. This makes the production process very expensive, while you want to produce a cheap product. That is why rotary screen printing is more suitable for these dyes. 

Because of these differences, the tendency that prevails nowadays is that the two technologies can best be used side by side. That is why many companies nowadays invest in digital but also want at least one machine to enable rotary screen printing.