Discuss the various aspects of direct to garment printing. DTG printers include Brother, T-Jet, Flexi-Jet, DTG Kiosk, Kornit, Mimaki, Tex-Jet and others! Discuss and learn about this up and coming printing technology.
Hi, I am just starting out and i am having a hard time finding out about foil printing. I will be buying a DTG printer and i would like to be adding foil to apparel. I am trying to stay away from silk screening. And everything needs to be done in house. Can anyone advise me on the best solution for this.
Thank you
I'm afraid you will not be able to do foil printing with a digital direct to garment printer.
Foil printing on a garment is usually done by screen printing. The image is screened on the garment with plastisol ink or an adhesive. A foil sheet is placed over the imprint and is heat pressed. After cooling the foil sheet is pulled off the garment. The foil will stick to the ink or adhesive, giving your your foil imprint. With all of the digital garment printers you are printing with water based inks, which the foil will not stick to. (you can imagine what would happen to your print heads if you tried printing adhesive through it).
Since foil does not stick to waterbased inks, it was one of the tricks we used to use when I screen printed. If we wanted a multicolor printed shirt, with foil in just a section or two, we screen printed the shirt with a combination of plastisol ink and waterbased ink. When we heat pressed the foil sheet to the shirt the foil would only stick to the plastisol ink.
Seems as if you use transfer paper to put the image onto the shirt then you lay the foil onto the transferred image and heat press, then peel of the foil and press again.
The image was not printed with a DTG printer. It's all done with transfer paper.
That's how I see it.
Yes, I know it was not printed with a DTG printer. I want to know all the step and how it work. where to buy all the supplies. I could go just go out and blow money away until i figure it out but that would not be the smart thing to do.
This is how i think it work Sublimation printer on Self weeding papper print your design heat press lay foil and press again.
if this is 100% correct please tell me.
Where can i go to buy all the above for a good price?
looks pretty simple to print with foils and you were even printing on dark color shirt. Why wouldn't this same technology work to print graphics on dark color shirts
this looks like : KISSCUT
Take a look at: Ich möchte helle und dunkle Baumwoll
I have a sample shirt made this way. You have to press the paper within 20-30min after printing otherwise it won´t work anymore...
Derschatten,
There is a solution to putting foil on direct-to-garment printed shirts. You're not spraying foil out of the print head, just adding foil after the fact. You're not using transfer paper or any special inks. After you print and cure, you apply an adhesive, apply the foil, then seal it with a heat press.
I haven't gotten a chance to try it yet (just unveiled at ISS Long Beach) but the shirts are looking good and if you're looking to do foil on direct to garment printed shirts, this seems like a solid way to do it.
I'd be interested in seeing how they did it. For the foil to follow the graphic so it will look right you would almost have to paint the adhesive on the shirt by folling the graphic design if your printing with water based inks. I think this would be hard to do and still get a nice looking foil design on the shirt.
Hi, you can use foil with a direct to garment machine. Have a look at the t-jet website.
This is essentially a manual process; nothing special. You are 'painting' glue over your printed image, and then applying foil or glitter just as they do in high school art classes.
There is also the Swinger, which is a new accessory for the Brother GT-541 (by Blackbyrd Design):
This would allow easy registration of a "foil / glitter glue" layer, or a base layer for darks, or puff inks, etc. Fernando, from Stitch City, is also working on a similar device. He had samples in his booth, which looked great, but he did not have the apparatus, itself.
I look forward to seeing how people will apply this creative process!
DTG and Foil 
