I just came back from the IMB in Cologne (Germany) - textile fair.
At the DTG booth they showed a new pretreatment machine that actually prints the pretreatment on the shirt !!! Of course the
machine wasn´t working..... they said the machine wasn´t supposed to be shown yet.... they didn´t have the time to prepare it. Nobody could tell me more about it
It is a "real printer" - a full size takes about 6min - pretty long time - don´t you think ? It prints the pretreatment only where your actual print is - not more. I have a brochure with a picture on it (pretty bad quality) but I will post it tomorrow.
Susan
That is an interesting concept, but yea sounds like a long time to take to pretreat. That would be great if you could post the pics. Thanks Susan Have you seen the speed treater from equipment zone? That one seems to pretreat fairly quick.
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee
More things to ponder now. I see it's called the Pre-Jet on their website. I look forward to learning more about this item. Did they have the Viper-Vesa at the show? That, too, looks like an interesting concept.
so - here is a pic of the machine. It is also available with a press. For some reason I can´t imagine this would work - the pretreatment is so sticky.... but when I asked them about clogging printheads they said: we would sell a machine if it won´t work !
Who knows - it might work !
I actually don't like the concept. The idea is that it uses a printhead just like any Epson DTG so that you can pretreat only the area you require. Sounds great in theory but for those of us who do lots of prints there are downsides
First, if it pretreats only the area of the design (plus maybe an extra 1cm around the design) it will still be pretty hard to align when take the garment from the pretreatment machine and put it into the your DTG.
Second, it requires a PC to operate. I prefer to pretreat further away from my printer and close to my stock room
Third, I don't think it will be that fast . I prefer a stand alone unit such as the Speedtreater or upcoming Viper. Using larger sprayers it can lay down the pretreatment faster then any Epson head.
First, if it pretreats only the area of the design (plus maybe an extra 1cm around the design) it will still be pretty hard to align when take the garment from the pretreatment machine and put it into the your DTG.
I have to agree with Zhenjie here, I don't think this will be a viable option for pretreatment. It seems just the fact that it prints the pretreatment instead of spraying it, would cause many registration problems, and I cannot see this working for long without clogging. The pretreatment is very sticky, where the ink is not, so I can only imagine what would happen to the nozzles on that machine.
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee
I am curious of the economics here. The cycle time on our SpeedTreater is about 7 seconds to finish spraying a garment. You can pretreat a lot of garments in the 6 minute time that Susan said she was told it takes to do one garment on this new machine. If you are only spraying the area that will be printed on your printer how do you register the garment in your printer after you remove it from the pretreatment machine so the print can fall within the pretreated area?
The Viper XPT-6000 Pre-treatment machine is the closest thing to that. It uses 6 nozzels that are programmed to selectively spray certain areas with virtually no overspray. It has a touch screen to select the pre-programmed areas such as left chest, right chest, middle chest, youth, baby, sleeve etc etc It also has the feature to select any variation of nozzel, speed and has a high degree of accuracy and repeatability. They have a Patent on the selective sparay areas and the spray tips are Patented too. More info : www.viperxpt.com
Epson printheads clog bag enough with waterthin inks, can you imagine how much clogging there is with PT fluid? Not sounding to good to me....
The problem you face with multiple nozzles spraying across the width of the shirt is that the individual sprays will overlap. Where they overlap the pretreatment will be thicker, which will give you stripes going down the shirt. Too much or too little pretreatment has a major affect on the printability and the washability of white ink. When we designed our SpeedTreater automatic pretreater we looked at multiple nozzles but found that there is always at least some overlapping where the spray edges from 2 nozzles meet, giving you different amounts of pretreat laydown across the shirt. We went with a one nozzle system on the SpeedTreater because we found that this gave one even pass of pretreatment going down the shirt.
Sorry Harry, I respect you a lot as I have for many years, but that is just not true with the Viper. The Viper's nozzels are patented and have defined edges with a controlled overlap. The spray droplets themselves were measured in a lab using high-tech instruments and laser array to find optimum density at specific heights. There is also virtually no overspray or waste of valuable pretreat fluid
You wouldn't have known about these nozzels because they are the newest patented technology.
The Viper is strictly for higher volume printers thAt need to control overspray/waste of valuable pretreat fluid
Anyway, this forum is not the correct venue to call out the pros & cons of pretreatment machines. Really the end user must determine that by seeing each machine in action "live". Only then can someone decide for themselves which machine is for their shop.
Anyway, this forum is not the correct venue to call out the pros & cons of pretreatment machines. Really the end user must determine that by seeing each machine in action "live". Only then can someone decide for themselves which machine is for their shop.
I would say this forum is a perfect place for such discussions.
I think the forum is a great tool for people who are looking to buy a product, that they have not yet invested in, to find out the pros and cons from other users I myself as a direct to garment machine owner, used these resources here to find out all I could before the purchase, before I was an end user. It helped me to make he decision on which machine I was interested in looking further into before buying.
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Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee
Yes excellent place to get feedback from "users"
the Viper is so new that you need to see it in person and not rely on a bias manufacturer's opinion on pros & cons
Harry said multiple nozzels leave banding that affects print quality. He has never touched or tested the nozzels in the viper. Do you take harrys word for it? Sorry Harry, again, I respect you as an inteligent man and a worthy competitor. Your machine worked the best of any other pt machine available and at a reasonable cost.
But I can't agree with you about the uneven and overlap sparay issue now. Things have progressed and changed.
anyway I can't type any more. I'm on my iPhone 10 miles off the jersey shore, heading back in from a long day of tuna fishing and my battery is dying.... I'm sure this thread will not dye all too soon
new pretreatment machine 
Have you seen the speed treater from equipment zone? That one seems to pretreat fairly quick.
