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.
I am new at all this and have had multiple problems since getting my machine three months ago.
I have a DTG HM1 printer. I printed a sample for a soccer team and decided to wash it to see it's durability. The design is washing out after one washing. What am I doing wrong? I did pre-treat and put down the white under layer before the final color.
Also what is the trick for getting your shirts placed right and having your designed printed straight, instead of crooked or off to one side?
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts
The odds are that your pretreatment and curing methods might need to be adjusted. Were you able to attend a training seminar and did they have you actually pretreat a shirt / cure / print / cure a shirt yourself? Maybe if you provide us more information about your pretreating and curing methods we could provide you better advice. Otherwise you might want to search the posts in the this forum on pretreating. There are several different ways to do it, but you need to find the method that works for your shop.
Most people will easily go through 12 to 36 shirts that they do wash tests on before they understand what needs to be done to get a good wash test. So don't get discourage... and practice some more, keep good notes and do the wash tests. Best wishes,
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts
Quote:
Originally Posted by g2much2do
Also what is the trick for getting your shirts placed right and having your designed printed straight, instead of crooked or off to one side?
THANK YOU!
Ginger,
To put your shirts in the proper position, you should look for the center line that most t-shirt manufacturers put into their shirts. If you get that line centered with the shirtboard, it'll be aligned properly.
Cheaper shirts lack a center line and shirts that have been heat pressed make the center line harder to see. On those shirts, you can mount the shirt and then fold up the sides of the shirt towards the center of the shirtboard. If the distance between the sides of the shirt and the shirtboard are even on both sides then your shirt is placed properly.
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts
The method i use is
1. wash the shirt to make sure there is nothing that will interfere with the paint
2. print the shirt then heat set it with a iron(i don't have anything else right now)
3. throw it in the dryer for about a hour on high then wash it
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts
Quote:
Originally Posted by g2much2do
Hello,
I am new at all this and have had multiple problems since getting my machine three months ago.
I have a DTG HM1 printer. I printed a sample for a soccer team and decided to wash it to see it's durability. The design is washing out after one washing. What am I doing wrong? I did pre-treat and put down the white under layer before the final color.
Also what is the trick for getting your shirts placed right and having your designed printed straight, instead of crooked or off to one side?
THANK YOU!
Ginger, what is the material of your soccer jersey? DTG is only good for cotton based garment or at least 50-50 blended with polyester. I believe most soccer jersey is polyester made.
Maybe you can print on 100% cotton black tshirt and run the test again.
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts
I would check the following for your washability issues. Make sure that the shirt is dry when you are printing on it, not damp with pretreat. Pretreating is not an exact science & there are different methods that work for different people but I generally cure the print for 180 seconds at 330 degrees. If you are using this as a benchmark you may want to check the temperature of your heat press to make sure that it is accurate. Fattulip's post is also something you will want to keep in mind. The ink you are using is water based & if you are printing on a high poly blend more of the ink will evaporate during curing & can give you washability issues becasue it is not absorbed as well into the garment as when using 100% cotton.
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts
Invest in a good heat probe to check the temp of your heat press. I bought this one Digital Pyrometer & Surface Probe Kit
It was worth the investment. I found that the display on my brand spankin new heat press was off by 8 degrees! That much off will make an incredibily huge difference in the success of the curing. It was expensive but it saved me a lot of wasted shirts a lot of unhappy customers and a ton in tylenol.
You can talk to 10 different people and find 10 different curing techniques. Experiment and find what works for you. A good place to start is with the specs recommended by the manufacturer of your printer.
Check the fabric you are using. If it isn't 100% cotton try doing the same thing you are doing now on a 100% cotton shirt and see how it holds up. There are many out there who say that they are getting good results on 50/50 but I have not had any luck with it. 80/20 is as far as I will go. (O.K. I lied, I did print on a 78/22 sweatshirt.)
So, fabric, pretreat and cure. It is likely one of those issues.
This is a discussion about Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts that was posted in the Direct to Garment (DTG) Inkjet Printing section of the forums.
Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts 
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts 
Re: Designed washing out when printing on dark shirts 
