At PRINTING United in Las Vegas, I talked with two companies chasing the same goal: DTF without the powder. Steve Harpold of Brown Manufacturing Group showed me the Yet-Tee, running DuPont’s jettable adhesive. Dave Blake of DCC Group showed me the Neo Flex, with the adhesive built into the ink. Same concept, different tech. Here’s the rundown.

Throwback: How DTF Works Now

Most shops still run DTF as a chain of separate steps. Print the film. Powder it. Shake it. Cure it. Cut it. Then a person presses it onto a shirt. I covered the basics in Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about DTF. I also compared it to DTG in DTF and DTG: What Are They and When Do You Use Each?.

Every handoff adds labor and error. When I dug through five years of Shirt Board threads for TBT: DTF Problems, the same complaints kept coming back. White ink killed printheads. Humidity caused undercure. Peel windows and press marks ate time. Shops also undercounted the labor at the press. I tracked the wider transfer market in TBT: Heat Transfer Technology in 2026.

DCC Group: Adhesive in the Ink

DCC took a new path. Its Neo Flex printers put the adhesive directly into the ink. There is no separate adhesive layer. The Neo Flex debuted at Impressions Expo Long Beach in January and won an Impressions Industry Impact Award. DCC distributes Nur Ink’s DTF and powder-free inks across the Americas.

The printer runs two white heads alongside the color heads. Dave explained that the two whites work as a pair. Together, they make the adhesion. I asked whether a shop could drop one white when the shirt color matched. He called it a good question, and he wasn’t sure yet.

Why Lose the Powder?

Dave gave me three reasons. First, and most important to him, is health. “That powder’s not good,” he said. It gets into your lungs. Second is hand feel. Third is resolution. With powder, fine lines lose their color, because there isn’t enough ink for the powder to grab. With the adhesive in the ink, he said, you can hold super thin lines.

Honestly, I think the range being innovated matters most. Without a premium option, DTF is a commodity product.

The Tradeoff Is Speed

Dave was blunt about the cost. Powder transfers press in about five seconds. At Long Beach, his powderless transfers took two minutes. Now they take one minute, and he wants 30 seconds. He doesn’t treat that as a labor problem. Instead, he puts two presses at the back of the machine.

The printer also runs slower, because the ink has lower viscosity. So DCC added a heated tray and a bar after the print to manage it. Dave said the ink cost difference is small.

Powder Didn’t Disappear

DCC’s printer runs both methods. Dave said he would only add powder for that harsher athletic look. Still, he expects powder to dominate for now. His guess is five powder systems sold for every powderless one, mostly because of speed.

Questions I Still Have

First, wash life. Dave told me he washed one shirt 20 times with no degradation. DuPont, meanwhile, published no wash data with its announcement. I want independent published wash tests.

Second, printhead care. My DTF research showed white ink as the top in-house failure. With adding adhesive into the white. I want to know the maintenance plan.

Dave called DCC new players in the game. “I think now we have a product that I’m comfortable selling,” he said. That honesty helps. Powderless DTF is real now, but it is not yet a drop-in replacement. It is a premium tier, and you should price it like one.

Okay, that’s enough DTF for a while.