Pocket tool for DTG operators · v1.6.1 beta · 19 Aug 2026 23:25 CDT
For any DTG/DTF shop. Photograph the machine, the alignment sheet, the error, or the bad shirt. Grok plus pixel math — not a serial-number guess. Lite beta now; Standard and Pro on the stores later.
Run the shop in this order
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Shirt
Halo, banding, pretreat, RIP passes, image choke — split into file / settings / maintenance.
Shirt photoHead life
Visible firing + install date + prints per week → a months range and a health band. Plot C/M/Y/K across nozzle checks on this serial — a slow fade is how a head actually dies.
Open health trendWhat it will not do
Make, model, and serial label the machine. They do not invent alignment numbers or remaining life. The ink on the paper does.
Things shops forget
Fold or wrinkle during pretreat leaves a line with no chemistry. Ink will not stick there. Re-pretreat flat and reprint before you clean a head or open alignment.
On the Ricoma Vision Head Alignment screen, enter A–G then press ALIGN (the circle). RETURN backs out without sending the numbers.
A–G and −4…+4 often print too faint. Pen them on the paper, circle the best cell, arrow a clog. Check ‘marks on the print’ and run Grok — it reads the handwriting.
Wet nozzles look recovered, then starve ten minutes later. Align after the second nozzle check, not the first.
Collar, seam, print, zipper. The middle of the panel is a lie. Crush on the high spot, satellites on the low.
Damp pretreat is sandy solids, halos, and ‘the RIP is bad.’ It is not the RIP.
On PrintExp, add or subtract from the number already in the box. Zeroing it is how people spend an afternoon.
Typed numbers that were never Calculated did not go to the head. This is the usual ‘nothing changed.’
If white is installed, circulate on the shop’s schedule. If it is on storage fluid, say so in Notes so the reader does not hunt A/B/C.
Low humidity + idle = morning dropouts. Cap overnight on cleaning fluid before you buy a head.
RGB at 72 dpi with a fat white plate looks like a dying head. Check choke, resolution, and color space before you power-clean.
A photo cannot prove cure. If it looks cooked but cracks or washes pink, the tunnel/time/temp is the next experiment — not alignment.
Regular, perfectly spaced horizontal banding that survives a clean is often a dirty encoder, not a RIP setting.
Named defects (halo, encoder banding, poly migration) live in the playbook.