Images magazine Digital Edition April 2018

TIPS & TECHNIQUES www.images-magazine.com 24 images APRIL 2018 Peter Joyce W hen digital printing onto garments first came to my attention back in the early 2000s, I felt I’d better take a look. At that time, the process produced poor quality prints and printing onto darks was still a long way off. Nonetheless, I kept a keen eye on the technology as I thought one day it might reduce the cost of sampling and make those small volume runs with a high number of colours commercially viable. We finally decided to take the plunge four years ago, but as the cost of building these machines meant there was no cheap route to market, it was an ‘all or nothing’ decision. I chose all! With no experience, we purchased an Aeoon Kyo 12 and I must admit I thought that the technology had advanced sufficiently for us just to install it and get on with printing. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Environment, ink costs, the cost of spare parts and servicing, the need to pre-treat, suitability of the garment surface and dye content, curing, and receiving adequate support were things Each month, leading manufacturers, suppliers and print shop owners share their DTG know-how. This month, Peter Joyce, managing director at TOTShirts, shares the lessons he’s learned since buying his first direct-to-garment printer four years ago that posed many problems. Had I known about these issues at the time I may well have decided against adding direct-to-garment to our portfolio of services, however that would have been a mistake. So, four years down the line, and with three Brother GTXs recently joining the Aeoon, what can I tell you? Environment The ink that we use in the Aeoon has to be at the correct viscosity. This changes depending on the [ambient] temperature – if it’s too hot or too cold, the ink simply doesn’t perform very well. The tolerance is very narrow – within three to four degrees centigrade – and the English weather doesn’t help. We had to build an enclosed space with air con and heating to maintain the optimum temperature, which is between 18°C and 22ºC. The amount of moisture in the air is also very important. If it drops to less than about 60% humidity, the inks dry and clog the heads on the Aeoon: when this happens, the heads cannot be recovered. The Brother machines are a lot more forgiving. Ink costs On the Aeoon, subject to coverage, the inks can cost anywhere between 20p and 80p per print for CMYK. Throw in the white ink required for dark shirts and a large print area can cost anything up to £2. For the Brother, the cost of buying the machines are a hell of a lot less, but you’ll need to get quite a few of them to get reasonable production numbers and the ink will cost you more. Cost of maintenance, spare parts and servicing The Aeoon is pretty easy to maintain, but failure to administer the recommended procedures will be at your peril! It’s a very high spec machine and the heads alone come in at around the £5,000 each mark; we have 12 of them. Dragging a service engineer from the Midlands or Austria also costs a pretty penny. We’ve only had the Brothers for a few months so we’ll have to wait and see how they pan out on this one. Pretreating garments Some companies print white shirts without pretreatment, but the results are not particularly vibrant and dark garments just won’t work without it. We use Image Armor DTG pretreatment for the Aeoon – More than one pretreatment machine is recommended to save time TOTShirts’ Aeoon Kyo One of the company’s three Brother GTXs from MHM Direct GB