I am doing my first order with heather grey shirts that will have designs on both sides. I am getting mixed answers on pre treating grey-whether to do or not to do and when I pre treat shirts that are two sided do you pre treat both sides at the same time? I am thinking that will be too much pre treat if I do both together.
Thanks.
With that shirt color, it is important to know what the graphic you are printing. If the lightest color in the graphic is darker than the color of the shirt, then you don't need white ink. If you use white ink, you need pretreatment. No white ink, no pretreatment (as long as it is 100% cotton).
As Mark indicated, if you are printing white ink on the heather shirt you must use pretreatment. You might want to consider using FastBright Pretreatment instead of regular white pretreatment. FastBright is meant for white ink on light colored garments.
I have never heard of that pre treatment before. When I bought the machine I was told only pre treat dark shirts and wasn't told about options. I actually wasn't told about pre treatment until after I bought the machine. Is the application process the same? I am a little concerned being new to this that this process can be lengthy and be tough to compete with screen printers.
You have to apply pretreatment to any garment that you print white ink on. The application process is the same for the regular white pretreatment or for FastBright pretreatment. The FastBright pretreatment is designed to be used when printing white ink on light colored garments only. The spraying and heat pressing after is exactly the same method as with standard white pretreatment. You could spray by hand using a Wagner Control Spray power sprayer or you could use an automatic pretreater such as our SpeedTreater.
You have to apply pretreatment to any garment that you print white ink on. The application process is the same for the regular white pretreatment or for FastBright pretreatment. The FastBright pretreatment is designed to be used when printing white ink on light colored garments only. The spraying and heat pressing after is exactly the same method as with standard white pretreatment. You could spray by hand using a Wagner Control Spray power sprayer or you could use an automatic pretreater such as our SpeedTreater.
Harry
Equipment Zone
Harry, just a curious question...
Why use a different pretreatment on lights? Does it help with staining? Thanks.
FastBright Pretreatment will have less of a "stain" on light colored garments. It also will not yellow when exposed to sunlight. It is also half the price of the standard white pretreatment.
We have one large customer printing on six Blazer Pro Printers on light colored goods only who only uses FastBright Pretreatment when printing white ink.
Sean, The original type 1 pretreatment, was definately UV sensitive. Anything but pure black you had to treat the whole shirt and still had issues. The concentrate that Anajet has now is the type 2 formula with no UV sensitivity. I do a lot of sports grey and medium shirts with white layer and you can dilute a little more that 50/50.
Ian
__________________ imprimeo! ....Digitizing, DTG and Embroidery..FREE Embroidery SOFTWARE Sierra Consultant, Stitch ERA Universal Dealer, Digitizing trainer for GUNOLD USA
The latest current version of standard white pretreatment from DuPont is UV resistant so you should haveno yellowing problems in sunlight. The DuPont white pretreatment is the one used and sold by pretty much all Epson based digital garment printers such as Anajet, Veloci-Jet, T-Jet, DTG, I-Dot among others.
You have to apply pretreatment to any garment that you print white ink on. The application process is the same for the regular white pretreatment or for FastBright pretreatment. The FastBright pretreatment is designed to be used when printing white ink on light colored garments only. The spraying and heat pressing after is exactly the same method as with standard white pretreatment. You could spray by hand using a Wagner Control Spray power sprayer or you could use an automatic pretreater such as our SpeedTreater.
Harry
Equipment Zone
With fast bright does it work well on the heathers being that they are up to 50% poly and dtg has a pretreat that is for poly but it says not to use with white ink I am confused are they different what the difference i have a client that wants white lettering and color on a dark heather what do I do?
Last edited by jester17; April 1st, 2010 at 02:12 PM.
EZ FastBright Pretreatment is designed for use to print white ink on light colored goods such as light blue, pink, mint green, and heather gray. It should work fine on your heather shirts.
From my understanding of the pretreatments out there for 100% polyester goods, they are made to only be used to print CMYK colors and are not to be used for printing white ink. To my knowledge there are no pretreatments available for printing white ink by digital direct to garment printers on 100% polyester garments.
I agree with Harry. I have done a lot of dtg printing on to 100% polyester and the only succesful prints that I feel are sellable and washable are with CMYK ink only. Most of the polyester dtg pretreat fluid is much lighter when applied to the garment compared to the white ink pretreat fluid. This is because they use less chemical solids because you will use substantially less ink printing CMYK ink compared to CMYK+White ink. On average, you will use 8 to 10 times the amount of white ink compared to CMYK on an Epson printer and 4 to 5 times the amount of white compared to CMYK on a Brother printer. So the pretreatment must be thicker or have a heavier hand than the polyester pretreat fluid. So if you try to use the polyester pretreat fluid with a white ink, the white ink will seep through the fibers. Some people are trying to apply both the polyester and white ink pretreatment, but I personally think a polyester garment should have a soft hand. Just not sure if that is possible with two different types of pretreat fluid. Time will tell if it will work and be sellable.
We have tried test printing using the standard pretreatment for white ink on polyester goods with very poor results, both in looks and washability. Tried it full strength and various degrees of dilution with water, all with bad results. I would suspect that applying standard pretreatment over pretreatment for polyester would give you equally bad results with white ink printing on polyester garments.
Pre Treat on Heather Grey 
