Platen.

The flat board, usually aluminium or coated metal, that clamps to the arm of a DTG printer or a press and holds one garment stretched flat and square while it is pretreated, printed and cured. Screen printing calls the same part a pallet, and Kornit's own glossary treats the two words as one thing, with adult, youth, sleeve, pocket and specialty shapes in both trades, because a board wider than the garment lets fabric fold under the heads. It fixes two things the operator controls: where the print lands, and the gap between the fabric and the nozzle plate. A seam, a zip or a bunched collar riding proud of the board is what a head strike is made of, and pretreat overspray baked onto the surface comes off on the back of the next garment as a rectangle nobody ordered. Neither fault announces itself from the loading side; both read on the finished piece. A platen swap is changeover time, which is why most shops standardise on two sizes and charge setup for the third.