# AutoTREAT Pretreatment Center



## RandomFuture (Apr 22, 2007)

Hey I just read about this in Printwear. Was wondering if this pretreatment center would work the same for dark shirts on any other dtg (DTG,Anajet,Flexi). Or if this thing is even worth the money, looks like it would save a lot of time.


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Is this the one from Screenprinters US (Tjet?). if so I've heard that it really saturates the shirt. Also, it cost so much that its not really worth it even if you are doing high production.

Let's wait till Flexi comes out with their Autotreat.


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## GRH (Apr 25, 2007)

I agree with zhenjie, this machine will never pay off with the smaller low volume machines. 

I have not used and or seen it but from my experience it couldn't do an acceptable job. To pretreat shirts manually with any success you must---mist the shirt with water---pretreat---mist the shirt with water---dab or wipe the shirt with a sponge. I don't see how this machine can possibly work at a level that is acceptable.

You would have to do 7000 shirts at a dolor a piece to pay for it.

Regards,
Greg


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

I believe I saw the prototype in Long Beach at the US screen booth. Yes it sprayed, Yes it saturated, but you still had to dry it. Perhaps with a gas drier with lots of airflow. But all us Shleps with a clam heater, no way. Also remember the 7 grand does not include the chemicals and we're talking the whole shirt here. Maybe there's a distributor out there who wants to get into the pre-treat biz.


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## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

the real point of the machine is that you get a even consistent saturation. With the US Screen machine you can also adjust the level of spray for different saturation levels. This would not be the machine for someone that does low productions but if you are doing a ton of darks it could easily pay for itself, that being said I would like to see them lower the price a bit.


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## binki (Jul 16, 2006)

I think zoom has something there. Maybe the T-Shirt manufacturers can make a white ink receptive dark shirt that has the pre-treatment built right in. Kind of like how they used to spray children's pajama's with asbestos.


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## fasteddie (Feb 5, 2007)

took this shot at the the Fespa.
see if anyone wanna hv a look


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## Don-ColDesi (Oct 18, 2006)

When I was at FESPA I spoke with Terry Combs from USSPIT and at that time they had still only built the unit they were displaying. He did say that they used it to pre-treat all of their shirts for the show. You sure gotta pre-treat a load of shirts to justify $6995 however.

Happy Pre-Treating!


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## Flying Loom (Jun 29, 2007)

I've been using a regular spray bottle and have yet to use the power spayer sent with the machine. It is quick and easy and get great coverage on the area to be printed. Cost - $1.50


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## PinkFreud (Mar 8, 2007)

Flying Loom...You got it right....a cheap empty spray bottle works just fine...is less messy and less wasteful.....However, I still use a high-end sprayer for larger runs


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

Don-SWF East said:


> When I was at FESPA I spoke with Terry Combs from USSPIT and at that time they had still only built the unit they were displaying. He did say that they used it to pre-treat all of their shirts for the show. You sure gotta pre-treat a load of shirts to justify $6995 however.
> 
> Happy Pre-Treating!


Surprised they don't call it Fast treat....


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Flying Loom said:


> I've been using a regular spray bottle and have yet to use the power spayer sent with the machine. It is quick and easy and get great coverage on the area to be printed. Cost - $1.50


I've tried to use a regular spray bottle but with each spray it would also send out large droplets of pre-treatment along with the mist. Perhaps I got a bad regular sprayer but I think power sprayers give out a far better mist.


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

Try starting your spray from the side, sweeping accross so that you are in full mist as you cross the shirt. starting the next "pump" and going back the opposite direction. The spitting will hapen at the beggining of your pump. Some spray bottles are better than others. You can practice with water, getting the perfect mist and pattern going. Most shirts will be very forgiving if you get some spitting, others, usually lighter colors can show staining, so you have to treat more of the shirt and feather in the pre-treatment areas.


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## larry banks (May 30, 2007)

When printing on dtg machines
How long do you cure your shirts for? What seems to be the best time and heat settings


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

I would do what the manufacturer recommends. I go for 90 sec at 330.


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## amv101 (Jul 16, 2007)

Autopretreat?

I wouldnt buy anything from these guys. They have very poor support, half functioning products and incomplete help manuals. Everything is hacked together and works like frankenstein! Trust me, we just bought a Tjet3 complete package and have had nothing but issues. I think in the past 3 months we got like 10 good shirts lol. I am sure after a while we will get most of the issues worked out, but we bought the machine to use it, not fix it everyday. I would say maintenence vs production is like 60/40 and thats being nice.


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## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

USSCREENs new autotreat machine sprays and presses your shirt, this means no heat pressing after you heat press the shirt. I have received shirts done with this machine (blank tees) and they are printing beautifully. amv101 sorry to hear about your T-jet3, I enjoyed using this machine when I helped a friend who bought one.


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## treadhead (Jul 26, 2006)

csquared said:


> and they are printing beautifully.


Chris...

Have you washed them yet? Wondering how they hold up in the wash...

John


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## mizi117 (Mar 12, 2007)

yeah..how long the printing quality remain constant


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## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

the shirts that I have washed just as well as the ones I can do myself but are more consistent. An example would be a shirt I did a couple days ago, i had a good pretreatment down but the graphic was large and I guess I missed a spot on the corner, needless to say this spot did not take the ink, then I printed the same one with a shirt pretreated by the auto machine (I was in a hurry and didnt want to pretreat another myself) and it came out great. I will post some pictures when I get some more time.


the price tag for this machine is high but man I wish I had one, if all goes as planned I will be printing enough dark shirts soon to justify that sort of purchase.


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## RandomFuture (Apr 22, 2007)

Do you know if the AutoTREAT can be used with different dtg's or is it strictly T-Jets?


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

Chris, do you know for sure that this thing "presses" the shirt also? The one I saw in Long Beach just sprayed and saturated, not pressed. I believe they were drying the shirts in a gas dryer. The picture that I see appears to have a conveyer, but I do not see how it presses. I'm interested where you got you pre-treated shirts from.


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

RandomFuture: Yes, almost all the DTG use Dupoint White Ink and the same pre-treatment. So the autotreat will be suitable for other DTG machines too. Even if they use a different pre-treatment you could still use the machine.

zoom_monster: They released a new auto-treat which includes the heat press now. better value then the original but I still think its far too high.

Should be a few auto-treatment machines coming into the market over the new few weeks/months. I'd wait until then to be honest.


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

OK, I noticed that they do have a video now. Interesting, but at this time, way too pricy for me.


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## ChameleonPrints (Apr 7, 2007)

zhenjie said:


> Should be a few auto-treatment machines coming into the market over the new few weeks/months. I'd wait until then to be honest.


I've been hearing this for over a year. The fact is, in this industry if you are going to wait for the next machine to come out, then you'll be waiting forever. As soon as the next machine hits the market everyone will be talking about the next machine after that which will hit the market in just a few short weeks/months and the advice will be to wait for that one.

I can't justify the purchase right now at that price, but I want one.


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

ChameleonPrints said:


> I've been hearing this for over a year. The fact is, in this industry if you are going to wait for the next machine to come out, then you'll be waiting forever.


I agree. I'm already a guinea pig...just don't want to be one for another "new" product. Innovation is good, but the first ones to buy don't always get the best "Deal". I'll let someone else jump in and perhaps start a business that just pre-treats shirts for all us poor folk.


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## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

I was actually thinking about doing something like this "if" I get one of these machines but like everyone else said it is a big investment. I received my pretreated shirts at a show but I would assume they would send you some if you wanted to test them out.


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## Peta (Jan 25, 2007)

I don´t think the Autotreater is so expensive. For us that print 50-100 shirts (different designs) per day and several other shirts it will pay off quickly.

It pre-treats perfect, it pre-dries with hot air, it heatpresses down the cotton fibers and then it´s ready to run. That reduces our cost´s for pretreating with 30-40% if you calculate with time, material, failures etc.

We will set up an automatic pretreatment in our facility that contains: 1 autotreater, 2 abb-robots, an automatic t-shirt folder and a t-shirt packing equipment. We will also offer pretreated shirts to other T-jet/DTG-owners in Sweden and maybe rest of Europe. The reason why we will do that is that our automatic equipment will have alot more capacity than we need for ourselves at this moment. If we use 200shirts per day that can be prepared by one person in 1-2 hours.

I don´t know when everything is up and running, but we have the abb-robots in place. Folding and packing equipment is on it´s way and we just got the price on the autotreater+shipping to Sweden. We also attend to move the whole company to a bigger and better facility, so maybe everything is in place a month before christmas.

/Peter, uniprint.se


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## zhenjie (Aug 27, 2006)

Why not invest in the Kornit Peta?

It treats it automatically PLUS prints all in the same machine. The way I see it. If you are doing enough shirts to invest in the auto-treat you would seriously be considering the Kornit route.


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## Peta (Jan 25, 2007)

zhenjie said:


> Why not invest in the Kornit Peta?
> 
> It treats it automatically PLUS prints all in the same machine. The way I see it. If you are doing enough shirts to invest in the auto-treat you would seriously be considering the Kornit route.


Hi!

Yes, we looked at it on FESPA and for the moment it´s to much money for one single printer. We need atleast 2-3 printers or more, today we use 2 T-jets and has borrowed another T-jet3 from a friend. The way we look at it is that it´s better to have multiple printers if one stops for some reason. We can´t afford a total stop for a day or more.

Another thing was that we were not impressed by the printresult on several different printers at FESPA. DTG, AnaJet, Kornit, PolyPrint etc did poor result compared to what we print in our T-Jets. Even UsScreen did some poor printing the first day (no bright white) but we helped the sales people to adjust the settings a little bit 

/Peter, uniprint.se


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## amv101 (Jul 16, 2007)

What are the prices on the Kornit machines??? they dont have them listed on the website...

I dont know what everyones issue is... it only took us a day or so to figure out the pretreatment with the wagner sprayer... seems to be the easiest part of the whole DTG process. It only takes a few seconds to spray the shirt and a total of 15 seconds to load and press the shirt.... so with all the functions, it takes about 30-45 seconds, plus the manual way allows you to adjust the pretreatment as you need it for different prints and garments....

I wish the Tjet was as easy lol

They should work on fixing the many issues that it (Tjet3) has, instead of making new products and going to trade shows...


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## tomtv (Feb 6, 2007)

when looking at the kornit plan on 100K when it is all said and done for the 932ds and for the larger 2 pallet unit you should look at about 215K.

This is from our research and experience.

hope it may help,


tom


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## amv101 (Jul 16, 2007)

shoot I think we already spent that in labor, ink, and screwed up shirts with the Tjet3 lol.... j/p


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## Peta (Jan 25, 2007)

I have calculated on the actual cost for pretreatment manually, and if you add time, material, failures, overspraying etc. we ended up with a cost of $4,85 per shirt + the shirts price $4,48. Total cost $9,33 to get it ready for printing.

I think we can sell the same shirt (100%cotton, 185g, pretreated on one side, folded one by one for perfect storing in shelf) for $5,95 + shipping. We have already a couple of customers that call me every week and wonder when they can order shirts from us, just because of the simplicity and less mess, plus the reduced cost of 30-35% compared to let one person handle the Wagner Gun.

I´m not really sure about the pricing yet, but I think with all our automatic stuff and less staff that we are able to cut some costs.

Any suggestions? Is the price to low or to high for a pretreated shirt? Should we skip the folding part? (we do that on our own shirts, so easy to handle the shirts one by one) How much would you be prepared to pay for a shirt like this? Maybe you think that we calculated a ridiculus high cost on manual pretreatment?!

Feel free to post comments, send me a PM or mail. All ideas are welcome.

/Peter, uniprint.se


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## zoom_monster (Sep 20, 2006)

Peta, 
What Money denomination are you giving us this in? And can you share your calculations? Not sure what you pay for stuff over there and would love to know your logic on all this. Thanks in advance.

Ian


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## Peta (Jan 25, 2007)

zoom_monster said:


> Peta,
> What Money denomination are you giving us this in? And can you share your calculations? Not sure what you pay for stuff over there and would love to know your logic on all this. Thanks in advance.
> 
> Ian


Absolutely Ian!

I will post all info here by tomorrow. I´m not at the office right now.
Everything is direct translated from Swedish krona to US dollar, and the Swedish krona is really strong right now so the numbers was not equal to the real world. I will make a US version and get back to you.

/Peter


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## tomtv (Feb 6, 2007)

The whole pretreatment thing is getting to be less of an issue as more people really work at it. We have found that a few little things in how we set up the shirt before pretreating in combination of our heatpressing etc. have given us incredibly reliable results. did it have a learning curve, yes, but so will any equipment purchases for pretreatment. In our case we will be happy to wait for 6 months of real world experience from people as the cost of pretreating with the machine really needs to be looked at over something like 10,000 shirts. still then you are adding .70 per shirt or more just for pretreating. i can tell you now that it is faster for us to do 2 or more our way than it takes to print one from what we saw this machine run at the last show.

just our opinion but the "PreBoards" that we have come up with really do the job. we have been asked about them so much we are going to have some manufactured and see how it goes.

tom


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## pascha (Jul 14, 2007)

hello everyone,

still questioning for durability. A friend said he had a sample, when he washed print is gone he says??? I am not sure of him. Could you inform for T-jet3. This machine looks promising for me to use. Thank you.


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## Robert72 (Aug 12, 2006)

Anybody knows what's the maximum width of pretreatment on the AutoTREAT?


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## printerguy (Dec 26, 2006)

Custom.Spanway said:


> Anybody knows what's the maximum width of pretreatment on the AutoTREAT?


I believe it's up to 18" wide.


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## Robert72 (Aug 12, 2006)

Humm, 18" of pretreating width is pretty good. 

Another question. Does any here has or knows somebody who has the AutoTREAT? or is it still a prototype?


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## printerguy (Dec 26, 2006)

Custom.Spanway said:


> Humm, 18" of pretreating width is pretty good.
> 
> Another question. Does any here has or knows somebody who has the AutoTREAT? or is it still a prototype?


I hear US Screen is going to start shipping them in October.


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## Robert72 (Aug 12, 2006)

Thanks Printerguy, I cannot wait to see one of them running.


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## csquared (Sep 8, 2006)

I have seen one running and it it pretty cool, I am going to be in Arizona in a couple of weeks and will be stopping by US Screen so I will relay my findings about the Autotreat machine if anyone is interested


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