Andrew, (our CEO and my co-author in this newsletter), attended Impressions at the end of January 2025 and shared an interesting comment from one of the big trade press distributors, Terry Combs from Equipment Zone, who was presenting at the show.
During his presentation, “DTG or DTF – What is the Best Fit for Your Business?” Terry mentioned that 90% of DTF equipment performance and support issues are caused by temperature and humidity conditions. In his words:
“If you are not comfortable, then neither is your DTF equipment.”
I found that really interesting because temperature and humidity issues have long been challenges in book and photobook print-on-demand – where paper and boxboard warping can be a major issue in certain geographies and at different times of the year.
Tracking Temperature & Humidity for Quality Control
But how do you record and track temperature and humidity so that they are linked to production batches? And more importantly, how do you trace back environmental conditions when there is a spike in quality fails?
As a CIO and technology solutions creator, I find this fascinating because a proven technology solution already exists for this problem – it’s called the Internet of Things (aka IoT).
What is IoT?
IoT devices are typically small, network-connected sensors with processing ability and software that can exchange data with other systems in real time. A great example is an environment-sensing device – which is a cheap (circa $50 or less), usually battery-powered device that measures temperature and humidity and connects via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to transmit data.
How This Applies to DTF
By using an IoT sensor and a good automation platform, you can periodically or event-trigger poll the sensor and pull real-time temperature and humidity data and, critically, store the data against your work.
This is supported out of the box by platforms like ZenSmart, which can automatically poll multiple sensors at different plant locations at different times of the day and during key production events.
In practice you do 3 things
- Routine Monitoring – In the press room, sensors collect temperature and humidity data every 15 minutes around the clock, ensuring optimal conditions and reducing the risk of inks drying in the lines or heads clogging.
- Event-Based Polling – Every time a batch reaches a critical stage – printing, powdering, or pressing – the sensors collect environmental data and store it against the batch ID and every individual item in that batch.
- Failure Correlation – If you experience a spike in print failures, you can correlate sensor data with those failures to identify patterns and trends using the reporting features of the software platform.
The Bottom Line? Protecting Your Bottom Line.
By staying on top of environmental conditions, you reduce costs related to:
- Ink clogging (leading to excessive head cleaning)
- Film moisture issues (preventing puckering and head strikes)
- Inconsistent pressing (ensuring uniform transfers)
- Labor and maintenance costs (reducing unnecessary downtime)
At the end of the day, better environmental control means better print quality, lower waste, and higher profitability.
