If you’ve been paying attention to some of this year’s new DTG printer launches, you may have noticed that the traditional gap between commercial and industrial printers appears to be closing. Today’s DTG devices are delivering faster printing speeds, better print accuracy, and more advanced technologies—all with a smaller footprint and a lower price tag. The following article will give you a quick overview of some devices that blur the line between industrial and commercial printers.
- Brother introduced its GTX600industrial direct – to-garment printer at the beginning of 2012.
- Brother is a frontrunner in promoting the “pod” concept, which combines multiple DTG printers, automatic pretreatment, and a
- Aeoon Technologies describes its MAIKURO DTG industrial printer. However, this classification can be misleading due to the high hourly rate of production. The MAIKURO prints 65 garments an hour and is a commercial printer or entry-level industrial printer.
- Even though there is still much to be done in all segments of DTG, new developments have led to improved commercial DTG printers as well as smaller and more powerful industrial DTG Printers.
Johnny Shell
Introduction
In the last several years, apparel decorators saw the DTG portion of their sales grow. Some of the same businesses are now faced with purchasing additional printers to keep up with customer demand. Commercial printer owners can be disappointed with slower printing speeds. However, companies that have industrial printers could complain of production problems or redundancy. Historically DTG devices were divided into these segments based upon their maximum print speeds.
Table 1. Table 1.
If you’ve been paying attention to some of this year’s new DTG printer launches, you may have noticed that the traditional gap between commercial and industrial printers appears to be closing. Today’s DTG devices are delivering faster printing speeds, better print accuracy, and more advanced technologies—all with a smaller footprint and a lower price tag. The lines blurred between industrial and commercial printers are being blurred by these new devices.
The Gap is Closing with New Introductions
Brother
In January 2022, Brother International launched its GTX600 industrial direct-to-garment printer. The new device features include a projector system, which automatically projects the design that is to be printed on its intended location. This allows the user to view the design exactly as it appears on the garment prior to printing. Brother’s Digital Line all-in-one pretreatment system can be paired with one or more GTX600 printers and conveyor dryers to maximize workflow efficiency. There are two versions of the system available:
- The Synergy pretreatment unit consists of a FireFly conveyor dryer made by Brown Digital, and a heat presse.
- Schulze Pretreat maker LINE can pretreat up 300 garments every hour.
These options allow you to combine pretreatment, drying and prepressing into one machine. This system uses three GTX600 printing machines, an automatic line pretreatment system and a conveyor dryer to produce 182 garments every hour. Brother is a frontrunner in promoting the “pod” concept, which combines multiple DTG printers, automatic pretreatment, and a dryer.
Brother’s GTX600 Industrial DTG Printer
Aeoon Technologies
Aeoon Technologies’ MAIKURO machine, a two-platen DTG device that prints up to 65 garments an hour, was launched in April 2022 by Aeoon Technologies. Eight Ricoh Gen5 printer heads are used to print images at 600 dpi. The maximum size for the image is 40cm by 45cm (16 in. 18. MAIKURO has a single-gantry printing system. As this video shows each platen gets printed first with the white underbase and then the color pass. The MAIKURO produces slower print speeds than other products, but Aeoon has classified it as an industrial DTG-printer. This classification is somewhat misleading given the hourly production rate—at 65 dark garments per hour, the MAIKURO is really more of a high-end commercial or entry-level industrial printer.
DTG Digital
DTG Digital, a subsidiary of Pigment, Inc., spent two years designing its Q2 DTG printer. It can be configured to allow for both direct-to-film and hybrid printing on one platform. The Q2 can print 100 heavy and 150 lightweight garments per hour at industrial production speed. It measures just 1,006 x 1,400 x 1,931 mm (42 in). x 55 inches x 76 in. It also features robust features such as a linear motion carriage guide for platens with auto height adjustment and ink mist extraction. The Q2 can simultaneously print both platesns, which is a unique feature.
Ser. Tec. SRL
Ser. Tec. SRL offers the Eagle TX S, which can print up to 120 garments per hour. This device can be configured with two, three, or four printheads and features printhead position control that automatically adjusts the printhead’s height based on garment thickness to avoid head strikes. Eagle TX S also prints materials with a thickness of up to 15 cm. The unique configuration of the printer’s multiple dual-platen configuration is a highlight. This video shows how the circular workflow can be used to simultaneously print and load.
Let’s get to the bottom
There are improvements in all areas of DTG printing, but recent developments indicate that there will be both more powerful and advanced commercial DTG printers as well as smaller, yet still very efficient industrial DTG printers. The lines between these segments are certainly blurring, so today’s businesses have a broader range of options than ever before. The requirement for “high productivity” no longer means investing $250,000 or more for an industrial-grade DTG printer. Using the “pod” concept that companies like Brother are championing, multiple printers can be grouped together to produce volumes that have historically been associated with higher-priced industrial DTG printers. Many companies would have hesitated in the past to make such large investments on printers that were susceptible to being shut down. The pod idea is appealing because of this.
Johnny Shell is the Director of Keypoint Intelligence’s Functional & Industrial Printing Consulting Service. A recognized leader and printing expert, Shell has over 35 years’ experience in the industry. Johnny was elected an inductee to the Academy of Screen and Digital Printing Technologies. This international group of experts honors individuals who have made outstanding, long-term contributions and applied and promoted screen and digital printing and related imaging technologies.