Shop setup-
It is best to have your computer no more than two feet away from your machine because anything farther from this can cause problems sending files over the USB cord.

Computer setup- I run windows XP, Vista compatibility will be available soon, You will NEED at least one gig of RAM(anything less and you will see a large slow down in the RIP). This is because like traditional ink jet printers the T-jet has a very limited supply of onboard memory so it relies on your computers to store, rip and spool jobs. I print my designs through the supplied FastArtist. This is a vector and raster based program. Although I print them through this, I do all of my design work in Photoshop cs2 and Illustrator. It is possible to print directly from those programs but I like the color representation in FastArtist.

The printer will operate best in a clean, dust-free room at a steady temperature between 68°F and 85° F (20°C and 29°C), and a relative humidity between 40% to 80% (noncondensing). Because of this I had to purchase a $15 humidifier.

For pre-treating dark shirts you must have your pre-treat station in a separate room from your T-Jet, as the mist from the pre-treat can ruin your machine. I have mine set up outside in an area that has as little wind as possible to ensure that I get a nice even coat for every shirt.

Monday- received a call (Mr. X) with an order for 130 white pocket t-shirts with a 12X16 (full color) image on the back and a 3x3 (2 color) image on the front pocket. With direct to garment printing there are no limitations to the amount of color in a given design. Ink cost will be around the same regardless of color.

While on the phone Mr. X assures me that his graphics are of high quality and that I should have no problems with them.

I order the white pocket Ts from Bodek and Rhodes. On top of the 110 Ts, I order 9 extra to account for spoilage.

Tuesday- I receive the graphics for the shirts from Mr. X. Right away I notice something was wrong. They are registering in at a whopping 72dpi. This will not be acceptable for the 12x16 back graphic. Knowing this will not turn out well, I ran a test print of both graphics. And as I thought, the 12x16 is horribly pixilated but the pocket image is not that bad only needing some touch up on the text.

I call Mr. X and ask him if he has anything with a higher resolution (150-300 would be amazing). No such luck, so I spend the next couple hours recreating his back design in 300dpi.

Wednesday – The shirts arrive at my doorstep (I am on a hot route so my shirts get to me in 1-2 days).

I get right to work by sizing all the shirts and put them in stacks setting aside the extras that I ordered. Next came the printing.

Setting up and printing

• First I run two head cleanings on the machine. (I do this before every work day to ensure that none of the nozzles are clogged and that I will get the best print I can on the first shirt.)
• Take a shirt and put it on the board. It is a good idea to buy extra boards so you can be printing with one and get another one ready to go. I am using two standard boards (the T-Jet ships with one of these). They measure 13" x 18" (33 x 46cm).
• I place the board into the print bed, and hit the load button on the machine.
• Get onto my computer and open FastRIP where I have the design already stored from the night before(I can keep all of my jobs stored here so if I ever need to do another order of the same design I just click and print, just like storing screens of all your work). I set the job at 110 copies and press print. The machine takes about 15 seconds to read the design and send it to the T-Jet then it starts printing. As this is a large vertical image it will take longer than a horizontal counter part. The print takes around 3 minutes to complete at an ink cost of around 40 cents a shirt. This will let me print around 20 shirts an hour.
• I take the board out of the print bed and place the next board in, press load and it starts a new print.
• Next I take the shirt that I have just printed and put it on my heat press (16x20 Hix HT600D). I have the press set at 330 degrees Fahrenheit and the timer set at 60 seconds. This is a very crucial step because with inks being water based they need to be heat set, so when the garment is washed the design will not fade or wash out.
• Before lowering the press lid I place two pieces of silicone parchment paper on the shirt to completely cover it. While I am waiting for the heat press to be done I load another shirt onto the board.

This process is repeated.

Problem

Around print number 23 I notice slight banding in the black. I run a head cleaning right away. This can be done in a middle of a print without messing the shirt up. After the cleaning things seem to be working fine, that is until about 15 shirts later when I notice the same banding issue. The graphic that I am printing uses a lot of black ink so I am guessing the banding is caused by ink starvation. I run another head cleaning and raise the elevation of the inks and everything works fine. (Another reason for this would be from the ink lines being too long. In this instance you can just trim the lines yourself.) No more banding issues for the rest of the order (or any orders after this).

Printing pockets

After all of the backs are printed and pressed I start in on the pockets. For this I decide to use two 6x6 infant boards. These can be bought from US Screen for $125 each.
To get the alignments right I raise the print bed and tape a piece of transparency paper on it, now I can print directly onto the bed and wipe off the print. Once I get to where I like the print, I place my infant boards into the machine on top of the print I just did. The bottoms of all of the boards have magnets so they will stay still in the print bed. Even with this I mark around the base of the infant boards incase of accidental movement.
I load my first two shirts directly into the bed and start printing. These print very fast at around 40 seconds at an ink cost of around 7-8 cents a shirt, so in theory I could print around 150 shirts an hour. This pace is a little fast for just me working the machine and heat press so my actual production numbers are a bit lower.

I do not run into any problems while doing the small pocket graphics.

Closing notes

At the end of the job I only had one wasted shirt that I pulled out because of the banding issue stated above. To be on the safe side in a normal production run I assume I will have around five shirts out of 100 wasted. This number will increase if doing dark shirts until you master the pretreatment process or order an automatic pretreatment machine.

I spend about 2 hours printing the pocket print and 6 to 7 hours doing the back of shirts, as well as 2 hours working on the graphics. So total time spend was around 11 hours. From start to finish this job was four days while having no shirt inventory (getting the job and ordering the Ts on day one, redoing the graphic on day two, receiving the shirts and printing on day three, and shipping out on day four)

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