# Automatic Pretreatment System



## royale (Aug 5, 2008)

Recently, we purchased one of Equipment Zone’s Automatic Pre-Treatment Systems. Based on our experience, we would recommend this unit to anyone who wants to accomplish the following: 



An immediate reduction in labor cost. What generally required two people, one person to run the press and one to handle the pre-treating; this machine has reduced our production work flow to one person. 


The machine gives you the ability to adjust timing and area of spray. The benefit is you can now control the area that you are pre-treating along with the volume of pre-treat liquid used on a garment. Bottom line, this saves you money and controls consistency better than pre-treating by hand.

Finally the design allows for solution recovery. Any excess solution falls in run off bottles on each side of the machine allowing you to capture and recover any solution and use it again. This is a valuable feature that has resulted in very little waste.
 
Reducing cost and improving efficiency are definite benefits of Equipment Zone’s new Pre-Treat machine


Royale Sporting Goods


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## raise (Apr 11, 2008)

Wow, that's a pretty solid testimonial! I'm waiting for delivery status on mine so hopefully it is everything we need it to be as well.

Glad to hear it works so well for you!


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Thanks for the review and feedback! Can't wait to hear some more before I drop some coin on it.


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## vinyl signs (Dec 26, 2007)

Am I correct in that the pretreated garment still needs heat pressed? Or does this also have a drying system on it?


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## sunnydayz (Jun 22, 2007)

Your correct Brian, you do still need to heat press after the machine sprays the pretreat.


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## Belquette (Sep 12, 2005)

> you do still need to heat press after the machine sprays the pretreat.


I will expand on this.

The spraying aspect is only one part of the sequence required to get results that are consistent.
You will still need to pre-press with distilled water before you put it into the spray unit and then you will need to knock down the excess droplets and then press until most of the moisture is evacuated.
The process before and after are just as important as a controlled spray.

Ironically the new Dupont pretreat is much less ficle as the old formula and is much more forgiving with less hand.
So decent results can be done by hand, but its' still quite sticky so the ecloser will keep your erea clean.

Mark


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Belquette said:


> You will still need to pre-press with distilled water before you put it into the spray unit and then you will need to knock down the excess droplets and then press until most of the moisture is evacuated.


So if we use an autopretreatment machien we still need to spray distlled water on the shirt before putting it into the machine? I thought the whole point of these auto pretreatment machines was to eliminate that step because it was a more consistent spray.


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## equipmentzone (Mar 26, 2008)

Belquette said:


> I will expand on this.
> 
> The spraying aspect is only one part of the sequence required to get results that are consistent.
> You will still need to pre-press with distilled water before you put it into the spray unit and then you will need to knock down the excess droplets and then press until most of the moisture is evacuated.
> ...



I can only speak to how our SpeedTreater Automatic Pretreatment System works. Our users of the SpeedTreater do not prepress before or sponge after. They put the shirt on the machine, the machine sprays the shirt, and our users just press the shirt for a few seconds before printing it.

Mark is correct in that having the spray enclosed keeps your area clean. One of the advantages of the SpeedTreater is that you can use it the same area as your printer instead of having to go to a separate room to pretreat by hand.

Harry


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## sunnydayz (Jun 22, 2007)

Thanks Harry, I was going to comment on this as I remembered reading your post in another thread stating this, but I couldnt remember which one it was so I waited for you  I thought you had said it didnt require any other step except pressing after pretreatment.


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## Belquette (Sep 12, 2005)

> I can only speak to how our SpeedTreater Automatic Pretreatment System works. Our users of the SpeedTreater do not prepress before or sponge after. They put the shirt on the machine, the machine sprays the shirt, and our users just press the shirt for a few seconds before printing it.


Every users expectations of what is good can vary. 
This is my experience of what achieves the best result.
If you did a side by side comparison of one just sprayed vs one with pre and post treatment it would become apparent.


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## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

I smell a bobby flay pretreat throwdown....


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## TahoeTomahawk (Apr 12, 2006)

I think this should go down next week, possibly at high noon.


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## royale (Aug 5, 2008)

zhenjie said:


> So if we use an autopretreatment machien we still need to spray distlled water on the shirt before putting it into the machine? I thought the whole point of these auto pretreatment machines was to eliminate that step because it was a more consistent spray.


 
Our experience has been different than yours. The SpeedTreater does not require spraying with distilled water. Our machine consists of an "End-to-End" process. Mount the shirt and treat with appropriate pre-treat solution. Take it out and print on it. No additional steps are required.


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## tblitz25 (Aug 7, 2008)

Do these automatic pretreatment machine result in lower shirt color alterations? when you spray too much the pretreated area becomes darker. Can you change the spray area of the treatment?


Thanks


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## equipmentzone (Mar 26, 2008)

The SpeedTreater allows you to control the length of the spray. What makes it unique is that the length can be set on the PLC both for top and bottom. For example, if you wanted a 4 inch high band in the center of the garment you can program it in that way. 

Because it is an automated consistent spray you should have significantly less chance of darkening the pretreat area.

Harry


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