Can you print directly on a spinnaker?
Yes. Spinnaker cloth can be printed directly, in full colour, across the whole sail. sailprint.eu has developed four separate technologies for it, because a used club spinnaker and an Olympic-level race sail are not the same job. The process is chosen after we know the cloth, the coating, the age of the sail and how it will be used.
Why a spinnaker is not ordinary fabric
A spinnaker is thin coated nylon. It is porous, it stretches, it is folded hard into a bag or pulled through a chute several times a day, and it carries load in every direction. Ordinary textile printing either sits too heavily on the cloth, cracks when the sail is packed, or will not bond to the coating at all.
That is why sailprint.eu prints on sailcloth rather than on fabric in general. The four processes — DRY-INK, SPI-PRINT, NaNo-Print and SAIL-STICKER — exist because no single method covers new sails, used sails, siliconised cloth, removable campaign graphics and grams-matter racing at the same time.
What can be printed
Any supplied image: sponsor logos, national flags, photographs, illustration or complete artwork covering the full sail. There is no restriction to simple shapes or a limited number of colours.
New sail or existing sail
Both. A new spinnaker is normally printed through the sailmaker before or during the build. An existing spinnaker can also be decorated — this is the usual route when a sponsor arrives mid-season and the sail itself is still good.
Related answers.
Every answer on this site is written from real sails, real cloth and real production — not from a template.