T-shirt printer is also called T-shirt printing machine, digital printing machine, direct jet printing machine, clothing printing machine, etc. if you look directly at the appearance, it is easy to confuse the two. Both sides have metal platforms, heads, nozzles, etc., and the size is basically the same as that of a UV flat-panel printer. However, the two cannot be used in general. The specific differences are as follows:
Different nozzles
T-shirt printers use water-based textile ink, and most of the ink bottles are transparent white bottles. The sprinkler heads used are mainly Epson series water-based heads, including 4720 sprinkler heads, 5133 sprinkler heads, etc. Some T-shirt printing machines will also use the sprinkler heads of the starlight series. UV flat-panel printers use UV ink, and opaque bottle packaging, mainly black, and some manufacturers use brown and other dark bottles. The nozzle used is mainly the oily head in the Toshiba nozzle, Seiko nozzle, Ricoh nozzle, and Konica nozzle series.
Different fields
T-shirt printers are mainly aimed at cotton, linen, silk, canvas, jeans, and other fabrics and a small number of leather materials. UV flat-panel printers are mainly hard plates such as glass, ceramic tiles, metal, wood or soft leather, mouse pads, handicrafts, and so on.
Different principles of drying and curing
The T-shirt printer adopts the method of external heating and drying + drying so that the pattern is attached to the surface of the material; the UV flat-panel printer adopts the principle of UV curing and solidification emitted by a UV LED lamp. Of course, there are still a small number of UV flat-panel printers on the market that are cured by mercury lamp heating, but this will become less and less and will be gradually eliminated.
It should be noted that T-shirt printers and UV flat-panel printers are not universal, nor can they be used simply by replacing the ink path system and curing system. The internal motherboard system, color software, control programs, etc. are also different. When choosing, choose according to what kind of products you own.