Impressions - June/July 2015 - 68

talking SHOP

Digital Decorating

Pretreatment can be
accomplished in the same room
with your printer if you use an
automatic pretreat machine. Or,
you can hand spray pretreatment
in an adjacent room.

John Albrecht: I think digital print speed
will continue to rapidly increase. Printhead technology will increase along with
electronics. Today, there are heads on the
market with thousands of nozzles covering
wide print areas in one pass. In the future,
this will only increase; so will the number
of heads. In ﬁve years, it should be to the
point that a single head array will cover a
24-plus-inch area and print an overall shirt
in one pass in a few seconds. Nozzle size
will determine print detail; nozzle numbers
determine ink volumes and together, with
number of heads on a machine, determine
ﬁnal speed.
New entries to the market will be hybrid digital screen presses, as well as inline
digital direct-to-garment presses. Digital
speeds will be more than 400 shirts per
hour. Every screen press will have a digital
option. Digital print companies will have
the option of small, inexpensive machines
and inline digital presses producing thousands of prints per shift with one employee.
68

Impressions | June/July 2015

Another key to future development
will be a continued drop in cost per print
(CPP). Digital ink prices will continue to
decrease as competition enters the market.
One big reason that so few textile screenprinting shops convert to direct-to-garment
printing is this high CPP. Future pretreatment, shirt manufacturing, print electronic
and software improvements, along with the
aforementioned upgrades, will play a key
role in how fast digital printing erodes traditional garment screen printing.

today. I also see this changing rapidly. As
speeds increase digitally, the need for pretreating increases at an even faster rate. As
the speeds and number of shirts printed
digitally increase, so will the number of
shirt manufacturers that are willing to invest in already-pretreated technology, as
well as the number of companies ﬁnding
outside pretreat options and companies
looking for inline pretreat options for their
presses. For those direct-to-garment printing presses that require ofﬂine pretreating,
the question will remain: If a decorator can
pretreat a shirt weeks prior to printing, why
can't a shirt be supplied ready to print?
I see a market being created for the
mills to pretreat as a ﬁnal step, in lieu of
other ﬁnishing processes or third-party
companies seeing a niche to offer pretreatment. Automated roll or other applicators
will become available that are capable of
pretreating hundreds of garments per hour,
along with shorter curing times. Maybe
microwavable technology can enter the
pretreat world. Who knows? Today, there
is still the option of having pretreatment
done inside the printer.

Impressions: The biggest weakness for
direct-to-garment (DTG) printing has to
be the reliance on a pretreatment system
for getting the ink to adhere to the shirt
fabric. On most DTG printers, this currently is an outside-the-machine step that
has to be dialed in exactly. What do you see
as the future of the pretreating process?

Impressions: There are two ideas that currently are competing against each other as
digital printing gets more mainstream. The
ﬁrst idea is that more shops will invest in
digital technology to solve their problems.
The other idea is the ominous corporate
Internet giant that uses a bank of digital
printers to gobble up orders that previously
went to local shops. What is your opinion?

Albrecht: I see pretreatment as a huge
stumbling block for entrants into DTG

Albrecht: I see the gap between highspeed DTG and low-cost DTG equipment
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