aspen

Hi, new member. I realize of course there is a specific forum for DTG, and a specific forum for embroidery, but since this post deals with both in a comparison situation I figured this forum was the best fit.

Anyways, I have 0 experience in garment printing businesses, but with my existing retail business I have a great idea for a niche to expand into where I would custom print garments for customers.

Since these will be custom, mostly 1 off, designs, ease of taking the customer's artwork and putting it on the garment matters. As I understand it I can just print to a DTG machine from photoshop or wherever, making that very easy to use. However, with an embroidery machine I need to program the design into it using special software.

It seems to me that if I have a 16 head embroidery machine and a photoshop image I've compressed down to just 16 colors that match the machine heads then I shouldn't need to have to edit the image in an embroidery program. Has no one yet invented such software to make such an easy bridge?

So. Basically I'm looking for machine recommendations, and information on if there is any embroidery machine that can do what I want, or if DTG is the way to go.

I plan on printing large garments, most easily described as jumpsuits (full body coverage), of a thick, somewhat roughspun, 100% cotton material. Most should be white but I hope to offer a full range of colors, including black.

If it helps at all (anyone local who would like to give me a hands on tour, pretty please) I'm in East Lansing, MI. Thanks.

 

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DAGuide

Sorry Aspen,

But what you want to do on the embroidery side is not there. You can't really do digital quality embroidered pictures on a shirt. Well, you can...but it would require you to embroider with white polyester thread and then to dye sub to the top of it. The poly thread will hold the dye sub ink. But, it is not a real fast process. If you are looking to turn and burn 1 off samples in a retail location (no more than a 10 minute wait), you probably would be better off with a dtg machine. There is no real good program that allows you to convert a photoshop file into a digitized file that an embroidery machine can read. You will have challenges with several things (i.e. undrelay, thread breaks,...). This is why companies like Dakota Collectibles have done so well with creating catalogs with thousands of designs that are digitized. If what you wanted could be done, they would have a hard time being in business - along with all the digitizing professionals. You should really go to a trade show or a show room to see how both types of machines work and their differences.

For easy-to-use so you can have a high school person run the machine for you if you are going to be in a mall, you might want to stay away from white ink printing. Just my opinion on this one. Hope this helps.

Mark

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Mark E. Bagley, Esq. - Marketing / Digital Consultant
Perfect Transfers - www.perfecttransfers.com / Hybrid Software - www.multirip.com

 

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