In inkjet printing, DTG and UV printers are undoubtedly the two of the most popular kinds among all others for their versatility and relatively low operational cost. But sometimes people may find it’s not easy to distinguish the two kinds of printers as they have the same outlook especially when they are not running. So this passage will help you find all the differences in the world between the DTG printer and UV printer. Let’s get right to it.

1.Application

The range of applications is one of the major differences when we look at the two kinds of printers. 

For DTG printer, its application is limited to fabric, and to be precise, it’s limited to fabric with over 30% of cotton. And with this standard, we can find that many fabric items in our daily life are suitable for DTG printing, such as t-shirts, socks, sweatshirts, polo, pillow, and sometimes even shoes. 

As for the UV printer, it has a lot larger range of applications, nearly all flat materials you can think of can be printed with a UV printer in one way or another. For example, it can print on phone cases, PVC board, wood, ceramic tile, glass sheet, metal sheet, plastic products, acrylic, plexiglass, and even fabric like canvas.

So when you are looking for a printer mainly for fabric, choose a DTG printer, if you are looking to print on a hard rigid surface like a phone case and acrylic, a UV printer can’t be wrong. If you print on both, well then, that’s a delicate balance you have to make, or why not just getting both DTG and UV printers? 

2.Ink

Ink type is another major, if not the most essential difference between the DTG printer and the UV printer. 

DTG printer can only use textile pigment ink for textile printing, and this kind of ink combines with cotton very well, thus the higher percentage of cotton we have in the fabric, the better effect we will have. Textile pigment ink is water-based, has little smell, and when printed on the fabric, it’s still in liquid form, and it may sink into the fabric without proper and timely curing which would be covered later. 

UV curing ink which is for UV printer is oil-based, contains chemicals such as photoinitiator, pigment, solution, monomer, etc. does have a tangible smell. There are also different kinds of UV curing ink such as UV curing hard ink and soft ink. The hard ink, quite literally, is for printing on rigid and hard surfaces, whereas the soft ink is for soft or roll materials like rubber, silicone, or leather. The main difference between them is the flexibility, that is if the printed image can be bent or even folded and still stay instead of cracking. The other difference is the color performance. Hard ink boosts better color performance, in contrast, soft ink, due to some characteristics of the chemical and pigment, has to do some compromise on the color performance.

3.Ink supply system

As we know from above, the ink is different between DTG printers and that of UV printers, so does the ink supply system. 

When we took the carriage cover down, we will find that the ink tubes of the DTG printer are almost transparent, while in the UV printer, it’s black and non-transparent. When you look closer, you will find that the ink bottles/tank has the same difference.

Why? It’s because of the ink characteristics. Textile pigment ink is water-based, as is mentioned, and can only be dried by heat or pressure. UV curing ink is oil-based, and the molecule characteristic decides that during storage, it can not be exposed to light or UV light, otherwise it will become a solid matter or form sediments.

4.White ink system

In a standard DTG printer, we can see there is the white ink circulation system accompanied by white ink stirring motor, the existence of which is to keep the white ink flowing at a certain speed and prevent it from forming sediment or particles which can block the print head.

In a UV printer, things become more diverse. For small or middle format UV printer, white ink only needs a stirring motor as in this size, the white ink doesn’t need to travel a long way from the ink tank to the print head and the ink won’t stay long in the ink tubes. Thus a motor will do to keep it from forming particles. But for large format printers with such as A1, A0 or 250*130cm, 300*200cm print size, the white ink needs to travel for meters to reach the print heads, thus a circulation system is needed in such circumstance. What’s worth mentioning is that in large format UV printers, a negative pressure system is usually available to better manage the stability of the ink supply system for industrial production (feel free to check out other blogs about the negative pressure system).

How comes the difference? Well, white ink is a special kind of ink if we factor into the ink components or elements. To produce a pigment white enough and economical enough, we need titanium dioxide, which is a kind of heavy metallic compound, easy to aggregate. So while it can be used successfully to synthesis the white ink, its chemical characteristics decide that it can not stay stable for a long time without sediment. So we need something that can make it move, which gives birth to the stirring and circulation system.

5.Primer

For DTG printer, primer is necessary, while for UV printer, it’s optional.

DTG printing requires some steps to be done before and after the actual printing to produce the usable product. Before printing, we need to apply the pre-treatment liquid evenly onto the fabric and process the fabric with a heating press. The liquid will be dried into the fabric by the heat and pressure, minimizing the unconstrained fiber that may stand vertical on the fabric, and making the fabric surface smoother for printing.

UV printing does sometimes require a primer, a kind of chemical liquid that boosts the adhesive force of the ink on the material. Why sometimes? For most materials like wood and plastic products whose surfaces are relatively not very smooth, the UV curing ink can stay on it with no problem, it’s anti-scratch, water-proof, and sunlight proof, good for outdoor use. But for some materials like metal, glass, acrylic which is smooth, or for some materials like silicone or rubber which is printing-proof for UV ink, primer is needed before printing. What it does is that after we wipe the primer on the material, it dry up and forms a thin layer of film which has a strong adhesive force for both the material and the UV ink, thus combines the two matters tightly in one piece.

Some may wonder if it’s still good if we print without primer? Well yes and no, we can still have the color normally presented on the media but the durability would not be ideal, that is to say, if we have a scratch on the printed image, it may fall off. In some circumstances, we do not need primer. For instance, when we print on acrylic which normally needs primer, we can print on it reversely, putting the image on the back so we can look through the transparent acrylic, the image is still clear but we can’t touch the image directly.

6.Print head

The print head is the most sophisticated and key component in the inkjet printer. DTG printer uses water-based ink thus needs the print head that’s compatible with this certain type of ink. UV printer uses oil-based ink thus needs the print head that’s fit for that type of ink.

When we focus on the print head, we may find there are lots of brands out there, but in this passage, we talk about the Epson print heads.

For DTG printer, the choices are few, usually, it’s L1800, XP600/DX11, TX800, 4720, 5113, etc. Some of them work well in small format, others like 4720 and especially 5113 serve as the best option for larger format printing or industrial production. 

For UV printers, the frequently used print heads are quite a few, TX800/DX8, XP600, 4720, I3200, or Ricoh Gen5(not Epson). 

And while it’s the same print head name as those used in UV printers, the characteristics are different, for instance, XP600 has two types, one for oil-based ink and the other for water-based, both called XP600, but for different application. Some print heads only have one type instead of two, like 5113 which is only for water-based ink.

7.Curing method

For the DTG printer, the ink is water-based, as mentioned many times above lol, so to output a usable product, we need to let the water evaporate, and let the pigment sink in. So the way we do that is to use a heating press to produce enough heat to facilitate this process.

For UV printers, the word curing has an actual meaning, the liquid form UV ink can only be cured(become solid matter) with the UV light in a certain wavelength. So what we see is that UV-printed stuff is good to use right after the printing, no extra curing is needed. Though some experienced users say that the color will become mature and stabilize after a day or two, so we’d better hang those printed work for a while before having them packed.

8. Carriage board

The carriage board is compatible with the print heads, with different types of the print head, comes with different carriage board, which often means different control software. As the print heads are different, so the carriage board for DTG and UV is often different.

9.Platform

In DTG printing, we need to fix the fabric tightly, thus a hoop or frame is needed, the texture of the platform does not matter much, it can be glass or plastic, or steel.

In UV printing, a glass table is mostly used in small format printers, while a steel or aluminum table which is used in larger format printers, usually comes with a vacuum suction system This system has a blower to pump the air out of the platform. The air pressure will fix the material tightly on the platform and make sure it’s not moving or rolling up(for some roll materials). In some large format printers, there are even multiple vacuum suction systems with separate blowers. And with some adjustment in the blower, you can reverse the setting in the blower and let it pump the air into the platform, producing an uplifting force to help you lift the heavy material with more ease.

10.Cooling system

DTG printing does not produce much heat, thus does not need a strong cooling system other than the standard fans for the motherboard and carriage board. 

UV printer does produce a lot of heat from the UV light which is on as long as the printer is printing. Two kinds of cooling systems are available, one is air cooling, the other is water cooling. The latter one is more often used as the heat from the UV light bulb is always strong, so we can see usually one UV light has one water cooling pipe. But make no mistake, the heat is from the UV light bulb instead of the UV ray itself. 

11.Output rate

The output rate, the ultimate touch into the production itself. 

The DTG printer usually can produce one or two pieces of work at one time due to the pallet size. But in some printers which have a long working bed and large print size, it can produce dozens of works per run.

If we compare them in the same print size, we may find that UV printers can accommodate more materials per bed run because the material we need to print on is often smaller than the bed itself or many times smaller. We can put a large number of small items on the platform and print them at one time thus reduce the print cost and level up the revenue.

12. Output effect

For fabric printing, for a long time, higher resolution does not only means much higher cost but also a much higher level of skill. But the digital printing made it easy. Today we can use a DTG printer to print the very sophisticated image on the fabric, we can get a very bright and sharp colored printed t-shirt from it. But because of the texture which is poriferous, even if the printer support such high resolution as 2880dpi or even 5760dpi, the ink droplets will only aggregate via fibers and thus not in a well-organized array.

In contrast, most materials UV printer works on are hard and rigid or at least won’t absorb water. Thus the ink droplets can fall on the media as intended and form a relatively neat array and keep the set resolution.

The above 12 points are listed for your reference and may differ in various specific situations. But hopefully, it can help you find the best suitable printing machine for you.