Purchased direct from Resolute, the R-Jet Pro direct-to-film printer was installed at the Manchester-based company’s site in early May.
The result of a six-month collaboration between Resolute DTG and The Magic Touch, the roll-fed R-Jet Pro DTF combines a 600mm-wide PET film with pigment-based textile inks.
After printing in a Resolute R-Jet Pro DTF, the film goes through a unit that lightly coats it with a hot melt adhesive powder. The resulting transfer is then cured using an inline ‘Shake & Bake’ unit or a traditional dryer.
The finished transfer can then be applied immediately to garments or textiles using a heat press, with no pre-treatment required.
Identity Printing print room manager Zahid Ali told Printweek: “When we saw the machine we were blown away with the quality of the feel, the handle, and the general look of the transfer itself so we placed an order straight away.”
He said the eradication of the need for pre-treatment and the ability to print on more substrates were the major draws of the machine for the business.
“If a garment’s not the right quality or pre-treat isn’t done right, no matter how good your machine is it doesn’t give you good quality print.
“But the main reason for purchasing this machine is so we can print onto polyester garments. We’ve got our own fashion brand, MisRep, which is end retail. It’s all DTG with embroidery; hoodies sell for about £80 to £120 a piece and t-shirts for about £50 to £60 a piece. It’s a young, trendy market that we’ve done extremely well with.
“But the polyester hoodie is one of the things that was our nemesis, we can’t print onto polyester with DTG machines. Even if you jumped through all the hoops to print on it, the quality wasn’t there, but with this the transfer goes on and it’s got stretchability, quality, and clarity, and it feels really nice on a polyester hoodie as well.”
Ali said the company had found the new machine easy to run, “with nothing complicated whatsoever on it”, and that the business was up and running with it on the same day it was installed.
Five-staff Identity Printing also operates three Ricoh DTG printers, an RI 6000 and two RI 1000s, four direct-to-substrate UV printers from Resolute, and specialist embroidery kit from Midwest.
90% of the work it produces is for MisRep and two new brands that the company is also currently developing, while the remaining 10% is walk-in customers.
A complete R-Jet Pro DTF system, incorporating printer, Shake & Bake unit, RIP, inks, films, and powders, is £15,000 plus VAT and includes installation, training, and warranty support.
