A Beginner’s Guide to Types of Printers

Flatbed printers and DTG printers are the best for printing directly to garments, tshirts or metals. You might question this fact by pointing out that regular printers also have a flat loading tray. So how is a flatbed printing machine different than a regular printer?

The printer can print on many materials, unlike a regular printer, which can only print on paper and photo paper. They can print on paper, cloth, plastics, ceramics, leather, wood and glass as well as acrylic.

How does a flatbed scanner work?

These printers function in a different way than regular laser or inkjet printers. Most printers today use a mechanism that charges the drum and paper and shines a laser onto it to create the desired image. The toner attracts the areas that are not charged and is pulled onto the drum to stick on the paper. This creates the printed image.

For flatbed printers, however, UV inks are used. These inks are not applied directly to the material. The print will fade in a matter of days. Printing on hard or uneven materials like wood, fabric, and glass is possible. Flatbed printers have a mechanism that cuts, if you will, the print on the material. Monomer-based UV inks are exposed to strong UV light sources that polymerize the ink, embedding the printed image onto the material.

To accommodate different thicknesses of materials, the printing bed can be adjusted. We are not sure what the maximum thickness flatbed printers can adjust to, but it could be as high as 4-5inches. This can vary depending on the printer’s build and type. The printers that are more expensive may be compatible with thicker material and vice versa.

Applications and usage

Flatbed printers can print stuff on unusual materials. This is because most people don’t know this. It’s easy to understand why flatbed printers are used for industrial and commercial purposes. Flatbed printers are only used for industrial and commercial purposes by one in every 1,000 people.

Flatbed printers can be used for screen printing due to their resolution of 72DPI to 2400DPI. They can also be used to execute multiple passes to create 3D or embossing effects. Sometimes, they can also be used to print on spherical surface. This is not possible due to poor resolution at the edges of spherical or circular edges.

DTG printers

DTG printers can, however, be used to print directly on garments such as tshirts. The printers use heat or dry air to dry the pigment ink.

Source: Arthur Huang