Discuss the various aspects of direct to garment printing. DTG printers include Brother, T-Jet, Flexi-Jet, DTG Kiosk, Kornit, Mimaki, Tex-Jet and others! Discuss and learn about this up and coming printing technology.
I was just at an ISS show in IL and was pretty impressed with the DTG Kiosk II machine. I have read many posts about DTG and there were a couple issues I was hoping some of you could supply a bit more info on. The first is the pre-treatment of dark garments. Is it a must do? Can it be done in an area with no fresh air coming through like a basement? Is it difficult to apply without the new automatic machines?
Next issue I have been seeing a lot of posts about is maintainance. How much time is involved? How often do you clean your ink tubes? Seems like there is quite a bit of maintainance on these machines, that's why I ask.
For those who reply, THANK YOU. This is a terrific forum!
the pretreatment is not hard, and yes you do have to do it on any shirt that requires a white underbase, as it is what binds the white ink to the fabric. I am not sure about using it in a basement, as I dont do it that way. I dont think it would be an issue though as long as you are not spraying it in the same room as the machine. There are also pretreatment machines that are avaiable that are enclosed. Harry from equipment zone sells one and so far the people are happy with it
As far as maintenance it only takes like 5 minutes a day, and then I flush my whole system every 4 to 6 weeks with distilled water and cleaning fluid. For the flushing it takes about 1 to 1 1/2 hours, but that is only every 4 to 6 weeks so not bad
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee
All of your concerns have been answered several times on the forum. If you do a quick search for maintenance, you will find several very informative threads that would take to long to repost.
Quickly - You need to pre treat in a room away from your printer, or if in the same room, at least 25 feet away. You MUST PT all shirts that you will print white ink on. Everyone's maintenance will be slightly different because of usage and environment.
All of your concerns have been answered several times on the forum. If you do a quick search for maintenance, you will find several very informative threads that would take to long to repost.
Quickly - You need to pre treat in a room away from your printer, or if in the same room, at least 25 feet away. You MUST PT all shirts that you will print white ink on. Everyone's maintenance will be slightly different because of usage and environment.
I did do a search and I know there are a lot of threads but they seemed like they were more for people who already own a machine and had a specific question. I was just looking for some basic, general info as I don't own the machine (yet). If you know of a thread please direct me if you have a chance. Thanks for your reply though.
Ok here is a pretty good post on pretreating. It shows a problem someone had and some good ideas of proper pretreatment methods. http://www.t-shirtforums.com/direct-...ng/t52278.html. Its hard to find threads of people that dont own machines talking about these subjects because most times, they come up from users having problems and finding solutions.
Here is a good thread from owners that tell what type of printer they have and why they made that decision. It also has a part to each persons post of what type of maintenance they do for their machine. What DTG machine do you own and how did you make your decision on it :), hopefully this will give you some of the answers you are looking for Hope this helps.
__________________
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee
Ok here is a pretty good post on pretreating. It shows a problem someone had and some good ideas of proper pretreatment methods. http://www.t-shirtforums.com/direct-...ng/t52278.html. Its hard to find threads of people that dont own machines talking about these subjects because most times, they come up from users having problems and finding solutions.
Here is a good thread from owners that tell what type of printer they have and why they made that decision. It also has a part to each persons post of what type of maintenance they do for their machine. What DTG machine do you own and how did you make your decision on it :), hopefully this will give you some of the answers you are looking for Hope this helps.
Maintenance is the thing. We never knew how much there would be until we started printing shirts. Then when we would get poor results we'd call the help line and then we'd find out we should be cleaning this part then that area. Our training never covered all the areas we needed to watch. We have an HM-1 by the way. We keep our machine pretty darn clean and still it requires some cleaning every 15 to 20 shirts.
As far as pre-treatment, yes you must on all dark shirts. It is not hard but you must keep it away from all your other equipment. Before we built a spray booth (I really need to patent this thing) we were seeing the results of overspray over 30 feet away. Not good on computers, printers or for the floor. Now with our "not yet patented" design, we have no overspray at all. Even below the booth on the floor.
This forum is a great place to acquire knowledge beyond what the sales people will tell you. Good luck with whatever printer you decide to buy.
Not sure how much you like fumes but I would not want to press pretreated shirts in a basement. This of course will depend on how many shirts your doing in a day I suppose, as well as how big your basement is, but I would not really want to work in a place without at least a window or some sort of ventilation going on.
DTG Users-Little Help Please 
