Something You Need to Prepare for DTF Printers

 Over several decades, the printing industry has grown multipliable, and more and more enterprises have started to DTF business. You will get various colors simply, conveniently, consistently by using DTF printers. Moreover, it’s a sustainable and cost-effective machine. Therefore, let’s toe the line of the DTF printer and see that what the DTF printer looks like.

To begin with, what’s the DTF printer? The definition is to directly print on the film. Then the patterns can be transferred to the garment from the films. The biggest advantage of DTF printers is the texture without limitation. Different with other printing machines, such as sublimation printers or DTG printers, DTF prints have its irreplaceable merits, which can be applied to cotton, polyester, Synthetic and blended fabric. What’s more, it doesn’t have color limits that both light and dark fabrics are suitable to print.

What the films used in DTF printing is called PET film that’s different from screen printing, and the PET film is about 0.75mm, which makes it has good transferring quality. These PET films are also known as DTF transfer films. These films can be cut for pieces and one-time usage. It can be classified into two types according to the temperature, which are cold-peel films and hot-peel films.

Then I will talk about hot-melt adhesive powder. Consisting of granular, the hot-melt powder is a kind of binding material. With hot melt powder, the color can penetrate into the surface of texture better.

Rotary Heat Press Machine

This device helps to transfer the printed image on the film to the desired surface or fabric. You can also use this machine to melt the powder on the DTF film.

Software

Software is an integral part of Direct to film printing. This is because the software will affect the color performance, ink printing characteristics and final printing performance. For DTF printing, you will need special RIP software to handle your white and CMYK colors. This is necessary because the software manages the color’s quality, drop size, ink level, and several key factors that contribute to print quality.

DTF printer ink

The ink used in the printer DTF is a unique pigment designed as cyan, yellow, magenta, white and black. White ink is the basis of your printing, while color pigments print patterns on film.

Curing oven

This is a small industrial oven used to melt the hot-melt powder of the printer and put it on the transfer film. Alternatively, you can use a hot press to perform this function. However, it is helpful if you use the hot press in non-touch mode.

Here are the Pros and Cons of DTF Printers.

Pros

It does not require pretreatment. The same goal of DTF printing in order to get better products, you need to buy high-tech printers, hot presses and good inks to ensure smooth printing.DTF printing requires PET film, but this does not mean that you can choose PET film of your own choice, as it may not be suitable for your machine.PET film has excellent mechanical properties, it has the best strength and resistance among thermoplastics and has a much higher tensile strength and impact force than ordinary film; This is suitable for secondary processing, such as printing and paper bags. The DTF printing must be printed on a special transfer film, hot melting powder on the back of the PET film, pressed into the clothing and peeled off the film if it is cold. In general, DTF printing is faster and requires less manpower than DTG printing.

You can use it on any fabric texture or cloth.

The material printed on it will still have a slight feel when you touch it. The printed fabric has excellent washing resistance.

Compared with other printing machines such as DTG, this process is less cumbersome and faster.

Cons

Compared with large format sublimation printer, the DTF printer has smaller printing area than sublimation printers. To some extent, the brilliance of DTF printer is lower than that of sublimation printing.

Why DTF Printers are so popular?

For one thing, the Direct to film printer can produce same quality T-shirts like sublimation printer and it can also complete some works that sublimation printers can’t achieve it. Without the material restrictions, it can be printed on the cotton, polyester and lycra. For another, it has no color limitations. You can get fine and exquisite color in both dark and light fabric. Therefore, the DTF printers has removed all the restrictions of traditional printing process. In addition, because you don't need any treatment in most cases, DTF printers save you overall printing costs. It can provide a high profit for your organization. It’s estimated that there is a large-scale growth of the DTF printers in the texture industry in the next few years. The suppliers believe that more and more companies will join DTF printing technology for its foreseeable benefits. Therefore, if you are the boss of textile or T-shirt company and want to produce printed fabrics efficiently and economically, the DTF printer is a potential direction.