Global fabric manufacturer Camira has launched a new digital printing system which allows far more intricate and colourful designs than the company has produced on bus seats in the past. JAMES DAY speaks to Camira’s Nigel Vickers about the new technology’s potential.
In March of this year, Camira launched Camira Print, an alternative to traditional moquette weaving which has the potential to vastly increase the options for how bus operators design their seats (MRR News May).
Where moquette weaving ordinarily uses four or five different coloured yarns which are woven together in a pattern, Camira Print instead uses a plain white, or off-white ‘greige’ material, which is dyed using a digital printing machine in a process not dissimilar to a desktop computer printer. This means a seat fabric can theoretically have 90,000 colours instead of five, which can be arranged in far more intricate and detailed patterns.
“We’ve always been tied to certain ways of weaving, allowing for similar lines and shapes,” said Nigel Vickers, Camira’s area business manager for UK bus and coach. “This new method opens it up to anybody’s imagination. Whatever they can imagine, we can print.”
So far, Camira has trialled prints in…
