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Absolutely you can. It's all in knowing your software and what I call Pre-Treatment Management.
Most DTG folks don't realize when they get started that pretreating a t-shirt is every bit as important as any other equation in the DTG printing process.
Here was my experiment. I wanted to print a 100% Gildan Ultra 2000 t-shirt (that is about as smooth as a window screen) with results that mimic a screen printed t-shirt with a smooth, opaque, athletic style look that is as opaque as a screen printed t-shirt without using a gallon of white DTG ink.
My artwork is kept simple and it is composed of solid areas of color. It is a two color print that might be similar to your local high school football or other athletic style print.
Here are my settings;
~ CBrezze RIP on a Mac laptop running Win7 on Bootcamp.
~ I chose the dark color t-shirt setting and created the white plate and also a white highlight plate. The CBreeze RIP gives you this option and the highlight white covers areas that are 100% white on a third pass. For most prints the cost is merely pennies per shirt because most total white areas are minimal. For this design I am sure it is a little more than that.
The CBrezze RIP also allows me to cut down the white ink that has to print under the black ink. I chose a setting of 40% white and that saves you white ink and money for sure! Without all of that white ink under my black ink it also lets my F2000 print a smooth very dark black too.
heat pressed dry. Heavy cotton tees absorb the pretreatment more than ring spun tees do so you have to slow the machine down. Your settings may vary somewhat.
I then dialed the SpeedTreater up a bit to a 40 setting and pretreated and heated it a dry a second time. This gives you a nice smooth foundation for your F2000 to give you the best results.
The double pretreatment method works much better than one massive wet pretreatment pass and holds up in the wash nicely too.
~To come closer to a screen printed look I hovered it dry for 15 seconds first and then pressed it with a Stahl's teflon sheet to give it a nice sheen.
Here are my results. The flash was on to fill in my body shadow so there is some reflection of this in the photos.
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Most DTG folks don't realize when they get started that pretreating a t-shirt is every bit as important as any other equation in the DTG printing process.
Here was my experiment. I wanted to print a 100% Gildan Ultra 2000 t-shirt (that is about as smooth as a window screen) with results that mimic a screen printed t-shirt with a smooth, opaque, athletic style look that is as opaque as a screen printed t-shirt without using a gallon of white DTG ink.
My artwork is kept simple and it is composed of solid areas of color. It is a two color print that might be similar to your local high school football or other athletic style print.
Here are my settings;
~ CBrezze RIP on a Mac laptop running Win7 on Bootcamp.
~ I chose the dark color t-shirt setting and created the white plate and also a white highlight plate. The CBreeze RIP gives you this option and the highlight white covers areas that are 100% white on a third pass. For most prints the cost is merely pennies per shirt because most total white areas are minimal. For this design I am sure it is a little more than that.
The CBrezze RIP also allows me to cut down the white ink that has to print under the black ink. I chose a setting of 40% white and that saves you white ink and money for sure! Without all of that white ink under my black ink it also lets my F2000 print a smooth very dark black too.
heat pressed dry. Heavy cotton tees absorb the pretreatment more than ring spun tees do so you have to slow the machine down. Your settings may vary somewhat.
I then dialed the SpeedTreater up a bit to a 40 setting and pretreated and heated it a dry a second time. This gives you a nice smooth foundation for your F2000 to give you the best results.
The double pretreatment method works much better than one massive wet pretreatment pass and holds up in the wash nicely too.
~To come closer to a screen printed look I hovered it dry for 15 seconds first and then pressed it with a Stahl's teflon sheet to give it a nice sheen.
Here are my results. The flash was on to fill in my body shadow so there is some reflection of this in the photos.
