the quailty you get from screen printing cant be beatin.
also any dtg prints you do have to be heat pressed after you print,
i think you would be better off comparing sublimation to screen printing.
both are have a better finish compared to the dtg
Personally i wouldn't even bother with sublimation on t shirts, without the ability to print on dark t shirts you are very limited in what you can do, that and the fact the t shirts need to have a high polyester content.
We screenprint, dtg and have sublimation facility. Personally, I don't bother with sublimation for t-shirts as you can't use 100% cotton and dtg gives just as good finish with a soft feel.
Both screen and dtg have their pros and cons, the main factors being price, turnaround time, low or high volume etc.
I wouldn't put 250 t-shirts with a 3 colour print on the dtg, our automatic screenprinter will do these far more cost effectively, on the other hand I did a job this morning that was 2 colours front and back, quantity 10 on white shirts and it took about 1/2 hour on the dtg. It would take that just to output the film and make the screens to do a screen print and then possibly have to mix an ink on top of that before we even put ink on cloth.
As it was an urgent job that came in this morning we were able to charge £12 per shirt, after t-shirt and ink costs the net profit was about £100.
We also send out dtg shirts through a dryer rather than heat press.
Mark
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Screenprinting - Embroidery - Direct to Garment
i agree there are both pros and cons with DTG and screen printing, we also do both, personally i prefer DTG as it is a lot easier to price and a customer who doesnt understand how the shirts are printed. DTG is a lot easier to explain, having said that if the customer would like a large run screen printing is the only way to go.
i also think DTG is the future as soon as someone develops a machine fast enough it will start to take over.
i wouldnt compare sublimation to DTG printing, we also have the setup for that but dont use it as DTG has far more flexibilty and in my opnion produces a better print.
there are a quite a few people who dont rate DTG printing but that i think is due to people not doing it right, you have to know what your doing and use the right ink or you could produce not very good prints.
the quailty you get from screen printing cant be beatin.
also any dtg prints you do have to be heat pressed after you print,
i think you would be better off comparing sublimation to screen printing.
both are have a better finish compared to the dtg
in what way is the finish on sublimation and screen print better that DTG other than the white is a little brighter on a screen print.
also you could not do a true gradient on a dark shirt or use lots of colours without using DTG
i would say the texture on dark shirts is more preferable than screen printing. also what is the issue with heatpressing the t-shirts, you have to send screen prints through a dryer and you could send DTG prints through a dryer.
As I'm in the need of help, I'm going to open this one up again rather than start a new thread.
I'm still at the stage of out-sourcing my t-shirt printing and I've got some fairly good prices for screenprinting from Impressions in Liverpool, but starting up my site with just 12 designs and a paltry 15 tees per design is going to cost me over £1000 for set-up & printing.
The one colour prints are grand, obviously nice and cheap, but when the designs get more diverse the costs rocket, especially inital set ups. For example I have a photograph of some humourous graffiti that I've played with and I've been quoted 4 screens & 4 colours to get it done. So at my start-up amounts that'll be about £150 at their prices for just 15 tees.
Is screen printing the best way to go for such a tee of a more photographic nature? Or is there there a method of better value?
Any advice would be so welcome it's untrue!
Thanks folks,
Neal
Don't need this to get into a Screen print v DTG both have pros and cons, both are different. If you want cheaper high volume Screen print. If its lots of colour more detail photographic then DTG is the way to go but expect to pay.
Hope this helps
if you only want a few, what about WOW from The magic touch. full floating colour on any colour garments.
great washability, soft feel, and you can make one offs. you could buy the kit to do wow for under £1000 since you don't need a good press. then You can make them as you want!
Screen print Vs DTG 
