Garment Printer Equipped With an Inkjet Pre-Treatment Coating System

Abstract

RICOH Ri 4000, which Ricoh started selling overseas in October 2023, is a DTG (direct to garment) printer that is developed to contribute to the business of users who are engaged in the printing industry such as T-shirts printing. When printing images on fabrics using a DTG printer, the pre-treatment process is required to coat the fabric with the pre-treatment liquid to improve the color developability of images. However, the conventional pre-treatment process is often performed manually, and therefore quality defects are likely to occur. RICOH Ri 4000 is a new DTG printer equipped with the inkjet heads that eject not only ink but also pre-treatment liquid to print images. We will report on the technology of RICOH Ri 4000, which solved the above problems by digitizing the pre-treatment process with inkjet.