[Jasoncroptic]

Hey guys, I'm looking at setting up a shirt printing business in Australia to print band t-shirts and hoodies. Majority of the designs I would be doing would be intricate full colour stuff. So I was wondering if I should take the path of DTG printing as it looks like less mucking around to get it up and running or would the traditional silk screen method be the better option? I'm going to get training before starting up but just wondering which path I should look into first?
Any advice would be great!

 

[treefox2118]

Depends on the number of colors you want to use, how many shirts you can budget to print at a time, how big the print will be, and what hand feel you want. As well as a plethora of other factors.

Post images of designs and we can help better.

 

[Jasoncroptic]

I'd probably be doing runs between 50-200 shirts at a time
Mainly on black tshirts. This is the type of images I would be working with, excuse the crappy screen shot

 

[Smalzstein]

If a run will be minimum of 50 shirts then I would go with screen printing. Anything lower then DTG.

 

[Jasoncroptic]

I'm guessing the colour separations on these sorts of designs would be pretty difficult to do or is there software to make it an easier process these days? For screen printing that is. And when screen printing these sort of designs would 4 colour prints be enough? And lastly with screen printing do you need to use conveyor dryers or can you use the press type ones which seem common with dtg print drying?

 

[Smalzstein]

For screen printing those you will need a professional setup:

8 color carousel with very good registration.

Good exposure unit, with vaccum seal blanket (a must)

Quality flash dryer, for simulated process quarz will be better than infrared.

Drying tunnel - if you want to print plastisol, small one will do, for waterbased you will need atlest 10 foot dryer with air circulation.

There are programs that can seperates the color for you but still you would need to make some adjustements - photoshop skills welcome.

I like seperation studio as a seperation software.

 

[treefox2118]

For screen printing you will want to hire an artist who has the skills to do this effortlessly.

Learning to halftone yourself is not something that comes easily.

But screen printing will be a superior method for making a profit.