Home Made DTG Printer

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Homemade DTG printer This description shows you how did I build a Direct To Garment printer with a ready-made Epson printer from the market. Before you try on your own, you really need to be aware that it is not an easy task. I strongly suggest you have a greater search on Internet to deeply understand what you are doing for. There was no guarantee to lead you into success with the information from this description.

Basic concern and plan: 1. Ink type There are several types of inks in the market. Dye based ink and pigment based ink are the basic and only the pigment based ink will suitable for printing on garment with some finishing process applied (resin coating, heat press, etc.). Heat pressing is the main secret; it makes ink drops and coating layer malt into fabric to achieve the permanent and washing resistant result. The coating layer is basically provide addition protect on the printed image and giving a deeper malt into fabric to hold the ink drops stronger and therefore a longer image life. By the latter experiment printing, the clear Acrylic enamel (water based) is good enough to provide such effect. Of course, Polyurethane related resin should give an even better result theoretically, but it is more costly. Within the main brands of ink suppliers, only Epson is clearly states their ink’s type and detail to each cartridge model. How ever, the Epson ink cartridge come with the chip it may leading you to buy their new ink cartridges again and again before you actually use off the ink.

Epson DuraBrite Ultra ink is the pigment-based ink. The DTG specified ink is for garment. It is nothing more than a pigment based ink with some additive to improve the performances. But chosen a right brand to match the existing printer head will be a hard and costly issue, which is out of scope of this description. 2. The off-the-peg printer To convert an off-the-peg printer to a DTG printer you need cut off all the parts under the paper feeding roll and using the paper feeding motor for your transmit ion carrier. So choose a printer with less metal components under the paper-feeding roll and with a stepping motor for paper feeding will make you easier. A printer using DC motor with a position encoder for paper feeding is not a good idea for such case. It may provide you a lot of problem unless you are really knows about it. In this case I choose the Epson stylus T20 printer for my DTG printer. 3. My plan With the material I have, I decide to have a rolled external transmit carrier bad to moving the object under through the printer head and using the origin paper- feeding roller with the stepping motor to drive it up. And, the modified printer need still having the head cleaning function

Copyright @ samzu.net 2009 works. This requires keeping the printer’s head parking-bay as it was and have a way to drive the head cleaning gear moving synchronal with the external transmit carrier.

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Printer

Printing object holder (Height adjustable)

Paper feeding roller & gears Disassembled from printer

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85

750

Wooden base

Feeding belt

The steps: 1. Disassemble the printer and taking out the paper feeding roll and the stepping motor. Do not break any parts and any cables. 2. Cut off the part under the paper-feeding roller from the original case to enable the printing object moving through under the printing head freely.

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3. Extend the cable of stepping motor for 50 cm. Please make sure that the cable you chosen have enough diameters for the current flow.

3. Make the roller transmit carrier with the paper feeding-roller and some other rubber rollers, which are come from other resource.

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4. Cut off the print-head positioner from the paper tray gear system. This gear will attach to the head-cleaning unit and make the cleaning unit moving on. ==================================================================== A big trick here is that Epson T20 printer uses this piece plastic, said positioner, to determine the print-head position data during the boot up stage. Without this piece plastic will drive you into crazy, you will never get printer working for you. It is painful and time consuming to

Copyright @ samzu.net 2009 figure it out if you ignored this piece plastic. So, you need observe your printer carefully and have the plan to make it still functioning. =================================================================

Positioner

5. Reassemble the printer head parking bay and head-cleaning unit

Printer head parking bay

6. Reassemble the printer head and it’s moving track system back to its position

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7. Reassemble the printer head parking positioner gear with a timing belt or similar stuff.

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Cut this bit off

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positioner

8. Mount printer onto my transmit carrier base

Copyright @ samzu.net 2009 This belt drives printhead positioner and head-clearing unit

9. Extend the paper sensor’s trigger

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10. Place the modified cover back

11. Mount the power unit

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12. The wasted ink collector

13. Make a garment holder with highness adjustable

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14. Install software to PC and follow the instruction provided by Epson to set up modified printer. Then have fun with your printer.