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DAGuide · July 14th, 2008

I just saw this video on YouTube of a new pretreatment machine for dtg printers from Equipment Zone - YouTube - SpeedTreater

Looks pretty simple and quick. I made a quick call into Equipment Zone (Equipment Zone - The Screen Printing and Digital Printing Equipment Source) and got to speak to Harry who posts helpful things on this forum all the time. This pretreatment is the first one that I know is actually shipping now (not in the standard "two weeks"). It has three containers on the back of it to hold two different types of pretreatment and one for water to clean the system. If you look at the platen, you will see a ruler that will allow you to ajust the Y-axis of where the pretreatment will be sprayed as well. From what Harry said, it is pretty quiet and only makes noise when it is spraying or the built-in air compressor is recharging. It runs off of 110 Volts of electricity.

Sad to say that I forgot to ask the 2nd most important questions (i.e. What is the price). Maybe Harry can post this answer here and if I missed any other things about it. But the most important question is that he has them ready to ship. That is good news for the white ink dtg owners that have been asking for one of these machines for a long time.

Contact Harry if you have additional questions.

Mark

Titchimp · July 14th, 2008

Looks nice, the fact that its shipping is a bonus too

sunnydayz · July 14th, 2008

I talked to Harry a while back and I believe it is around $4000 for the pretreatment machine

zhenjie · July 14th, 2008

Impressive. I'm really considering a auto-pretreat now, not because I cant pretreat manually but because my workspace just got reduced and need something that I can use inside an office without being so messy.

Robert72 · July 14th, 2008

Humm, I don't know if it's the video, but, doesn't the pretreatment look uneven?

the funk · July 14th, 2008

That is pretty speedy.

dt · July 14th, 2008

the pretreatment look uneven to me too

sunnydayz · July 14th, 2008

I think it might look a little uneven but if you are brushing your pretreatment in after the spray anyways, it should even itself out with brushing I would think. I would brush down the fibers anyways myself, as I have always got a better print by brushing after spraying

zhenjie · July 14th, 2008

Can you change the X axis as well? Seems like it would spray the entire width of the platen

Uncle John · July 14th, 2008

Question, why would you buy a $4000 dollar machine to do what a trained employee @ $10.00 hr can do? My understanding is pre-treatment can last up to 10 months. With a Wagner Sprayer for under a $100 why would you want to?

sunnydayz · July 14th, 2008

Hi John,

I have heard that you can pretreat ahead and store them but my own experience as a user, is that more then a week ahead they do not print well. Freshly pretreated shirts print best. I have noticed that if they sit for longer then a week the prints do not look as nice, and the ink does not lay as nice. I would like a pretreatment machine for the simple fact of having the overspray contained and ease of applying compared to using the wagner.

csquared · July 14th, 2008

I know that USSPIT has already shipped some pretreatment machines.

Don-SWF East · July 15th, 2008

When I look at pre-treatment machines I see one thing - cost per shirt. What value do you place on having the shirt automatically pre-treated? If you say a quarter, then the pre-treat machine will need to do 16,000 shirts before it becomes profitable (assuming $4000 price tag). If you say a dime that number grows to 40,000 shirts! From what I have seen (including prototypes we have built) the pre-treat machines also waste a lot more pre-treat than the "manual" method soes, also adding to the cost of pre-treating. I think that $1500 would be palatable to most folks, maybe even $2000, but above that is really starting to push the cost/benefit barrier.

JMHO

DAGuide · July 15th, 2008

I also agree with Don. Before any shop goes out an buys any pretreatment machine, it has to make good business sense to do it. I am big on how long something will ROI itself out, but I look at several things that are specific to each and every single shop. For example, when pretreating...
1. How long does it take for you (or an employee) to pretreat a shirt the manual way versus using a machine? Better yet, can someone else even do the process of pretreating a shirt correctly?
2. How much space do you have in your shop? Do you have enough room to pretreat shirts safely away from the printer or do you have to go outside to do it?
3. How many shirts (probably have to do # out of 100) are not pretreated enough or done improperly and you don't know until after you print on it?

The key with a machine is the consistency it provides. #3 is the one that will save you the most money because you will be wasting time on the printer and ink. Thus, the standard quarter that was mentioned as a value of a pretreated shirt goes up much higher if you have a significant fail ratio due to the wasted cost (i.e. the cost of the shirt, cost of pretreatment, labor to pretreat, labor for printing and the wasted ink). So how valuable a pretreatment machine is or how fast someone can ROI it out is going to be shop specific.

Just my opinion,

Mark

TahoeTomahawk · July 15th, 2008

I agree with both Mark and Don on this one.

Another good thing about the machine is that if you hire a new employee, there is no need to train them with the wagner sprayer which can take awhile to learn.

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