[inkoead]

Can someone help me understand when pre treatment is required for DTG printing?

Here is what I know: pre treatment is required when printing onto dark shirts (which require a white base).

But is pre treatment required on light colors (specifically on cotton shirts)? If not, would using a pre treatment on light colors improve the quality of the print? I assume the pre treatment chemicals used for light garments is different from the set of chemicals used for dark colors.

Just a little background: we are printing on cotton AA and Gildan shirts.

I'd really appreciate it if someone could clear this up for me...

All the best

 

[Smalzstein]

1. Whenever you use white ink you need pretretment.
2. You use Dark PT for dark shirt colors and Light PT for very light shirt colors (light yellow, light gray, light blue).
3. You can use Light PT for CMYK only prints on white shirts. It will improvew the color vividness, detail and washability.
4. No one with their right senses will use Gildan shirts for DTG. They just don;t work. use only quality ones. AA will do fine.

 

[inkoead]

1. Whenever you use white ink you need pretretment.
2. You use Dark PT for dark shirt colors and Light PT for very light shirt colors (light yellow, light gray, light blue).
3. You can use Light PT for CMYK only prints on white shirts. It will improvew the color vividness, detail and washability.
4. No one with their right senses will use Gildan shirts for DTG. They just don;t work. use only quality ones. AA will do fine.

I really appreciate your response. Very helpful. When it comes t DTG, do you recommend any other brand other than AA? How about Hanes or Fruit of Loom?

Cheers,

 

[sandmanbjj]

We use mostly ring spun Cotten shirts

 

[inkoead]

Thanks. While we are on this subject, does anyone know whether pre treatment on light shirts actually lives visible marks? Does it depend on the type of material the shirt is made out of, or is it more a matter of the type of pre treatment one uses?

Like if you check out this video on youtube, the viper leaves behind a square mark after being pre treated:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anuw89Xb50c[/media]

 

[Brian Walker]

Thanks for the question.

The video does not leave a mark..... what you see in the video is the wet pretreatment coming off the Viper.

The Image Armor LIGHT does not leave a mark, and for Dupont ink sets you can print white ink as an under base or just print CMYK only ink colors on the shirt. Either way it will wash really well.

 

[Smalzstein]

I really appreciate your response. Very helpful. When it comes t DTG, do you recommend any other brand other than AA? How about Hanes or Fruit of Loom?

Cheers,

Fruit of the Loom are the worst t-shirt for DTG after Gildan. Hanes do well.

 

[Inspired Buffalo]

Gildan is by far the worst shirt to print on.

I never spray my white shirts. Just bump up the color setting.
it just seems like a waste of pre treat and it is an extra step that I would rather avoid.

I have become paricually good at the rip sofware and change settings all the time with great results.

Darker garments are tricky. It all depends on the quality of shirt.
Gildan requires heavy spray just to get the print to look good.
American Apparel is the cadillac of shirts. It requires little spray even for dark garments.
I ahve become quite good at how to handle most brands. What works, settings, spray.
It is a process. It took me a year and alot of experimenting to figure things out.

I run a full business with just a DTG machine.
Learn the rip software. Keep fooling with heavy, light spray.
You'll get quite good at it over time

 

[Lunte]

What about neon shirts with digital print?
I thought I had a setup to print on neon shirts, but after putting it in the washing machine it didn't look well.
I used the Anvil yellow neon shirt to print...

I am printing with a Brother GT-381 and I'm using the Viper to pretreat the garment

Has anybody an idea how i can get a good result?

 

[Brian Walker]

Yes. If you pretreated with the Brother PT and did not put a white under base down, it will fail. The Brother requires white first.. If you printed just color on the pretreatment it looked great, but as soon as you washed you saw massive washout.

I'd try Image Armor. You don't need a white under base for the cmyk print to look awesome.

 

[Lunte]

First: I pretreated the garment with a viper xpt , but I ain't not sure about the spray amount (I've tried between 17% - 50%)

Second: I've put a white under base down, like I normally do when it's necessary, so this isn't the problem.

Third: Maybe it's caused by the NEON shirt or because it's an anvil shirt. Could that maybe be the reason why this result is getting a massive wash out or just because I'm doing something wrong???

 

[sindhu g n]

hi..
Before printing DTG colors on the tshirt, white base ink is first printed on the shirt.on that white base dtg color is printed. To avoid the soaking pretreatment is required for both dark and light color.

 

[rklovestruck]

Gildan shirts print fine but the smoother the surface the better print you will receive. So Gildan 64000 Soft Style Tee will print nicer than Gildan 2000 Ultra Cotton Tee. American Apparel 2001 and Anvil 980 print great because they are ringspun soft cotton.

Fruit of the Loom recently released new styles that we were told were better for printing. They are part of the HD series so styles like Fruit L39VR Ladies Vneck & Fruit of the Loom 3930BR - Youth Heavy Cotton HD Tee print really well.

Now onto pretreat, we use the same pretreat on black garments as we do on light garments (never on white). As mentioned above the rules are that you need pretreat for any art files that have white in them or when printing on dark garments. We warn our clients that the pretreatment may leave a visible residue which will wash out after 1 or 2 washes. This does depend on the garment. The softer garments tend to show the residue more and the Gildan Ultras do not. Some shirt colors are effected more than others too. This is not necessarily a pretreat issue and may be a heat + pretreat issue but we have been having problems with batches of Charcoal tees discoloring and always have issues with Oranges, Reds, and triblends.

Neons are completely unpredictable. We do NOT recommend DTG printing on neon unless you have a way to cure the whole garment (using a belt heater) and not a rectangle sized heat press. We have done experiments with Neons and the ink sometimes bleeds on them because many times neons are not high cotton content items.

 

[ejnrby]

Fruit of the Loom HD shirts print very well with DTG.

 

[nestea683]

Pretreatment must be used on all dark shirts when using white ink

 

[sinGN]

Hi,
dark garment requires a base of white ink to be printed before the DTG colors are printed. Pre-treating is required on dark garments because otherwise this white under-base will soak into the shirt. so pretreatment is always required.