Direct to Garment Printing - I've gone and done it!

[Andrew]

Hi John. Just out of curiosity, what type of customer base do you target with that machine? Is it one off's or multiple prints etc?

[mrs maggot]

i love the printed coat hanger labels - nice touch

[danlad]

What does it cost to print a single t, does it use allot of ink per print? What sort of ink is it?

[Stitch Up]

..... and finaly,



Simples

[Paul]

its a meerrrrrrkaaaat! not! its marrrket! meeeerrrrrrrkaaaaat lol. love it


SIMPLES!

[Kaz]

Still green with envy here

[Stitch Up]

I haven't been on here much lately, in fact, due to work committments I haven't been on any forum much lately! The upshot of all this is, I haven't been printing much lately either, the upshot of that is my NeoFlex has been standing idle for more than I wished and the upshot of that is - ink clogs!!

So I removed the printhead and manually tried to release the clogs! I spent literally hours without success . Now I purchased a unit called the Jet Genie for just this event, but guess what, parts on that failed before I'd even used it once! I'd removed the parts and returned them to the USA for replacement but I had some shirt to print and just had to buy a replacement printhead - what a trial that was too! Anyway, £350 lighter the printhead arrives and fitted and hey presto, printing again

A few days later, the replacement parts for my Jet Genie arrive and I assembled the unit, filled it with 3 litres of cleaning fluid, placed the old blocked head in the float. I programmed the Jet Genie to run for 12 hours - acoustic vibration, irrigation, pumping, sucking. I stared in amazement at first as I saw the ink being dislodged from the head and 12 hours later, a printhead that looked brand new

The Jet Genie with all fluid lines attached.


......... and from the front - the surface of the printhead is about 2mm below the surface of the fluid.



Fitted the old printhead back in my printer - absolutely perfect

£350 lighter but I have a spare printhead, so I'm happy.

50 Ts to print today so I'm off.

John

[AdamB]

Good to see you back with the fold John - 50 Ts .................. should take you all but an hour with the 'monster'!

[JOSI74]

WOW looks fantastic, would love to know how you get on

[Stitch Up]

Well, I recovered the printhead and fitted the new. Printed a few shirts and they came out great. Then, I printed some shirts with a lot of detail and there was a problem!!

The image below was taken on my camera phone & magnified somewhat and, if you look at the small text you'll see it's printed twice with a gap of about 1mm between!! Looked bloody awful., the camera phone doesn't help either!


So, I contact the tech guys at All American and they instantly know what the problem is and how I should rectify it - BiDirectional Alignment!! And it takes an age!

Time is something I don't have in abundance so I didn't get round to carrying out the adjustment until last Saturday! Never having done these alignments before, I took my time to make sure I got it right. Nearly 6, yes SIX hours later, I'd cracked it and achieved a perfect alignment pattern. All that was left to do was to save the new settings and then I pressed the WRONG button and lost the lot :rolleyes: Good job there wasn't a mallet nearby!!!!

I left work early today and started the whole process again, this time it took me just 90 minutes and this time I DIDN'T press the wrong button.

First test shirt printed and here's the result printed on a Gildan T.


I'm back, just need the time