or the uninitiated, Tajima is not just a machine company. In fact there is a tremendous R&D effort always underway with a mandate to find new and exciting ways to embellish clothing and textiles, using existing Tajima technology, or plowing the road for new technologies to be added to equipment.
A very exciting new technology that Tajima has developed for use with garments sewn on its existing equipment is called Thermal Masking Embroidery. This process takes advantage of a physical phenomenon called sublimation in which a dispersed solid dye transforms directly to vapor. In essence, one can transfer a design image printed with a dispersed dye to transfer paper in advance, and then transfer the image to embroidered fabric by heat. Tajima's process, which is patent pending allows for beautiful and colorful designs to be permanently layered on top of standard embroidery not to be printed, transferring the image, and then melting away the mask. Depending on the type of fabric, the process uses either hot water or dry cleaning solvent. |
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 Fig. A |
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Fig. B |
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Fig. C |
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Fig. D |
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Fig. E |
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Here is how it works:
1.
Polystyrene is sewn onto design to mask certain places. (Fig. A)
2.
Thermal transfer (Available widely) is heat pressed onto unmasked portions. (Fig. B)
3.
The polystyrene dissolves away along with the thermal transfer paper by either using hot water, Heat Away (trans to power when hit with hot air), or dry cleaning solvent depending on the properties of the particular fabric.
4.
What’s left is a unique and beautiful embroidered design that adds tremendous value to your garment. (Fig. C)
This process can also give you dramatic results with Cording (Fig. D) and also Sequins (Fig. E). With sequin transfer it is important to note that on light colors the transfer process should use light sequins and on dark fabric it is necessary to begin with white sequins.
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