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 Guys,
I originally posted this in General a week ago, and got only 2 feed backs. I'm hoping for more input from here. If this is not the place for this post, moderator, please move to correct location.
Thanks
(Original Post-09/16/09)
Hi Folks,
First let me say this place is a godsend of information for someone who wants to get into the t-shirt biz. I hope I have chosen the right place to post this. I have been following these threads for sometime now, but don't do much posting, as I'm just trying to research on my own. I have decided I need to post a question and get some feed back on the best printing process for my style of design. Mainly all designs are for dark shirts (hence the reason they are all on black background), but some will be for white. All have textures and gradients and color. Most all designs are for the Salsa community. Quantities will be from 1-500 per design. Most are created in PS CS4, some in Illustrator CS4, in CMYK at 300 dpi. I want them to have a soft hand and hold the colors. I have had some white shirts printed DTG and love them. I realize from your forum that there are many difficulties printing DTG to black, but that is where I'm leaning. I have no equipment yet, or a web-site, but am trying to figure my best route. I have been in paper printing for 15 yrs and am now dedicated to do design work for T-shirts as I find much joy from this process. Now I just need to know how to get them out to the world at large. I would appreciate any feed back I could get.
Thank you
Raye
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I think those would be great for DTG prints. I have a DA Sawgrass printer but do not currently print on black, it is an option I have considered but have not yet done the switch over. The equipment is expensive and if you don't want to jump right into it I'd suggest having a contract printer do you a small amount at first. Here is one I found via Google; http://contractdtg.com/ If you start that way you can still sell your shirts locally or when you get a site together you can sell them off there as well. Just an idea hope it helps in someway... Have a good one...
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Choose a job you love, and you will never work a day in your life.
-Confucius
These designs look great and will print very well using direct to garment. The benefit of dtg is you can print on demand and dont need to hold expensive stock on the shelf.
You can get a very good machine now for less than you probably think, with new ink technology machines are getting simpler and prints last longer so now is a very good time to start rather than a couple of yeas ago.
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IGS-UK Colin Marsh http://www.igs-uk.co.uk
UK Dealers for the new Rainbow-Printer & StayBright4 Professional Textile Ink.
Raye, unless you print on a DTG with white ink every single day, the white ink will give you headaches. Even printing on the machine every day, the white ink will still be work. If you contract out to have shirts DTG printed, then it’s not your headache.
You have quantities of 1 -500 mentioned. In my opinion, once you start printing a 100 or more shirts of a single design, screen printing becomes the attractive solution for the types of designs you showed us. Using water base and discharge inks for screen printing will give you a nice soft hand. Screen printing can print any design that a DTG machine can print. Contracting out your screen printing is not a bad way to go if you need hundreds of shirts.
Your Fania design screams out to be screen printed with glitter inks and/or foil!
Mark,
I was told my designs would be to expensive and or impossible to do as screen prints. I have read in these forums about process screen printing, but am unfamiliar with the process needed to have file correct for printing. I don't know how much work it would be to change the files over and don't even know where to start. How hard is it? I would love to see 'Fania' done up with foil and glitter, I think it would come to life the way I envisioned it. How is that done? I am trying to find the best way to get things done, so any help or input only aids in my search. Thanks to this forum I have learned so much and I appreciate everyone's advise and knowledge. Koodos to all.
Raye
Raye, unless you print on a DTG with white ink every single day, the white ink will give you headaches. Even printing on the machine every day, the white ink will still be work.
Hi,
This is not quite true any more. With the new stable white ink you can leave a machine off for days without fancy wims systems or auto headcleans. Things have moved on since there was only one good white ink manufacturer.
__________________
IGS-UK Colin Marsh http://www.igs-uk.co.uk
UK Dealers for the new Rainbow-Printer & StayBright4 Professional Textile Ink.
I was told my designs would be too expensive and or impossible to do as screen prints. I have read in these forums about process screen printing, but am unfamiliar with the process needed to have file correct for printing. I don't know how much work it would be to change the files over and don't even know where to start. How hard is it? I would love to see 'Fania' done up with foil and glitter, I think it would come to life the way I envisioned it. How is that done? I am trying to find the best way to get things done, so any help or input only aids in my search. Thanks to this forum I have learned so much and I appreciate everyone's advise and knowledge. Koodos to all. Raye
Raye, whoever told you that your designs would be impossible to screen print is just flat out wrong. They would be expensive to screen print at small numbers, that is true. But say at 144 or more, especially when you start doing 250 or more of a single design, it is cheaper than DTG and you would get the benefits of the specialty inks that DTG cannot do like glitter and stuff. Although the durability of DTG prints has improved, DTG is still not as tough and fade resistant as screen printing. So another good point for screen printing.
I think your designs would best be screen printed on an automatic press using index color. Then using water base and discharge inks, with some specialty inks like glitter and such, the shirts would be nice and soft to the hand. With the special inks that would be kind of on top of the fabric, compared to the water base, it is a really cool effect. Kind of nice and tactile to the touch in a good way (in my opinion). A good contract printer would do the separations in software like SPVR, Fast Films or some others. You don’t have to worry about it really.
DTG would definitely be good if you can only do numbers of under a 100 for each design. Glitter can even be added to a design on a DTG print with a white underbase. The glitter is just sprinkled over the white underbase before the color pass. So it is not like the way you can control it in screen printing because it is in the ink, but it looks pretty cool. Also, doing glitter with a DTG you have to really make sure the buyer hand washes the shirt and lays it flat to dry though. Otherwise the print degrades quickly.
I have a DTG printer and love it. I mostly only print on black Tees.. It is very time consuming to print on large quantities of black T shirts, as a full size print w/white ink on a black T can take about 8 minutes alone just to print. But our shirts look amazing. After some research and time, I found a great setting to print out fades.. when making the settings for your design.. you should send the print through twice---> 1st send through as "white ink soft layer" then send through right away with "color layer black background." You can send it on as a run production and I make an average of 50-60 prints in a full day. Lots of work, but i enjoy it and the shirts look great. Good Luck!
I have a DTG printer and love it. I mostly only print on black Tees.. It is very time consuming to print on large quantities of black T shirts, as a full size print w/white ink on a black T can take about 8 minutes alone just to print. But our shirts look amazing. After some research and time, I found a great setting to print out fades.. when making the settings for your design.. you should send the print through twice---> 1st send through as "white ink soft layer" then send through right away with "color layer black background." You can send it on as a run production and I make an average of 50-60 prints in a full day. Lots of work, but i enjoy it and the shirts look great. Good Luck!
Hi Ann, doesn't the Black Background option already print a white layer soft? Are you doing 2 passes of white? You shouldn't need to.
hiya =) Im not printing 2 passes of white, and the printer automatically prints a white layer if you select "color layer black background," but if you want to print a good fade, if you select "soft white" you have to resend a second print to follow it, which again would be the "color layer black background." It doesnt print another pass of white, just makes it a softer layer of white print. We spoke to some techs at DTG and found it was the best way to capture a fade of colors.
FEEDBACK-Is DTG Right for These??? 
