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've been browsing through some posts and i've got this burning question.
does digital printing produce prints on tees that are soft to the touch? meaning that you totally cannot feel if it is a screenprint or a heat press.
or are there other techniques to be applied on tees that will give such an effect and feel?
Thanks guys
Hi Jinx,
You cannot feel the print (usually) with DTG prints.
We use the DTG Kiosk that can print on all color shirts including White Ink on black shirts. Check out some of my posts to see some examples.
We also have some examples of prints on dark colored shirts here:
threadsafeinc.com/samples.html
Rodney,
do you know how well the waterbased Ink used in screenprinting holds up when used on blended fabrics such as 50/50 or materials like Lycra / Nylon?
I know the DTG inks are mostly water-based also, so I would expect they are very similar. Anyone else out there have any expirience with waterbased screen printing?
do you know how well the waterbased Ink used in screenprinting holds up when used on blended fabrics such as 50/50 or materials like Lycra / Nylon?
It's intended for use on 100% cotton, and is supposed to require an additive when printing on polyester.
So far polyester print tests I've run have been inconclusive (the ink fades on cheap polyester as expected; I haven't run many washes on better polyester, but so far so good).
I doubt they'd like Lycra / Nylon (5% in a typical women's shirt shouldn't present a problem, but I wouldn't hold my breath on a pair of bike shorts for example - I suspect the results would be terrible).
As a rule of thumb though, waterbased screenprinting inks prefer 100% cotton.
I know the DTG inks are mostly water-based also, so I would expect they are very similar.
I'm pretty sceptical about that (them being very similar that is, not that DTG is water-based ), but given that I know nothing about ink chemistry I can't really know.
(not being similar is not necessarily a bad thing; waterbased screenprinting ink is flawed in as much as it drys out too rapidly when exposed to air - it would probably clog the print heads)
Quote:
Originally Posted by TahoeTomahawk
Anyone else out there have any expirience with waterbased screen printing?
I have some white Lycra shorts and some black and red lycra wicking fabric in 5 yrd rolls.
I'll try to do 3 prints and see if / how they hold up. I'd guess that if any of them do, it would be the white.
Digital printing on tees 
