[Stitch-Up]

Is it worth a newbie like me getting a pre-treatment machine or, is the 'art' of manual spraying relatively easy to learn?

I believe there are a few machines available but wonder if anyone has conducted any test on them and come up with a 'must-have'.

Cheers

John

 

[IYFGraphics]

Is it worth a newbie like me getting a pre-treatment machine or, is the 'art' of manual spraying relatively easy to learn?

I believe there are a few machines available but wonder if anyone has conducted any test on them and come up with a 'must-have'.

To me it would depend on the volume of t-shirts you'll be doing in like a day, week, or month. For us most of our orders are 50 or less pieces and we may have a lag of days to weeks between orders, for our low volume a pretreat machine just doesn't make sense, but if you were running everyday doing hundreds of shirts a week then yes I would have to have one to be able to keep up.

Hope this helps.

 

[Diver86]

A pre-treatment machine will give you more consistent results. It will help you to get the best opacity from the white ink.

Uneven spraying makes for uneven results. There "is" some latitude between too much and too little, but you won't know if you're within that latitude until you actually print, or wash the shirt. By then it's too late.

Our industry is finding out just how extremely important it is for good controllable and consistent pretreatment laydown.

Is it worth it for you to spend $6,000 on a good PT machine? No one can tell you that, except for you. Add up your rejects, returns, reprints, wasted oversparay PT cost and labor for all of the above. Suddenly that $6k doesn't sound too bad.....

I can't say here which one is THE best, ask around our industry and you'll find out which one gives the best controllable laydown and is the highest recommended PT machine....

I don't want to start anything here.... but if you have "weeks" between jobs, you really aren't IN the DTG business. It must be a side job to round out something else you make a living on.... if that's the case, stick with hand pre-treating.

 

[FatKat Printz]

I agree with both of them.. I really think the "art" of our pretreat process would be the how to handle the Wagner sprayer..

Sure its not rocket science but there is a good way to get the proper flow. When we were in training there were 10 people in the class. One of the trainees was a professional painter (he was the only one got the shirt right on the first try). We then came home tried it ourselves and had trouble with getting it right. So we enlisted a friend of ours who is a professional car painter and body man. He adjusted the sprayer and gave us some tips on the movement. Since then we haven't had any pretreat problems.

 

[IYFGraphics]

I don't want to start anything here.... but if you have "weeks" between jobs, you really aren't IN the DTG business. It must be a side job to round out something else you make a living on.... if that's the case, stick with hand pre-treating.

Thanks for the clarification, I'm trying to figure out how I paid for our DTG in less than 18 months not being in the business.....LOL!

 

[Diver86]

I "KNEW" that would invoke a response I'm glad you took it with a grain of salt.... and understood where it was coming from.

 

[IYFGraphics]

I "KNEW" that would invoke a response I'm glad you took it with a grain of salt.... and understood where it was coming from.

No problem....and you are correct DTG is just one aspect of our business sometimes in the forefront, sometimes in the background but all add to the bottom line.

Take care..

 

[tfalk]

I'm probably going to be buying a pretreat machine in the next couple of months. We've never been able to get good wash results doing it with the wagner. My thinking is the machine will help take us from the couple of shirts a month to a couple of shirts a week and to the bigger orders we currently can't handle.

 

[dontbedumb]

I agree with both of them.. I really think the "art" of our pretreat process would be the how to handle the Wagner sprayer..

Sure its not rocket science but there is a good way to get the proper flow. When we were in training there were 10 people in the class. One of the trainees was a professional painter (he was the only one got the shirt right on the first try). We then came home tried it ourselves and had trouble with getting it right. So we enlisted a friend of ours who is a professional car painter and body man. He adjusted the sprayer and gave us some tips on the movement. Since then we haven't had any pretreat problems.

can you mention some of the tips he gave you, i plan to start doing pre/treatment with the wagner sprayer and see how it goes