DTG or Direct to Garment printing, is a way to print designs and artwork on T Shirts and apparel. You may have only just heard of the DTG printing process, but you can be sure you have been wearing clothing that has been printed with this method for a while. DTG (Direct to Garment) is the perfect option for print-on-demand business. Let’s take a look at DTG (Direct To Garments) advantages, disadvantages.

Direct-to-garment printing is very similar to the inkjet printer that you currently use to print onto paper. The main difference is that you are printing onto fabric. This process uses injection printer technology (the ink jet printer). DTG was created to be a quicker option to screen printing with the option of easily printing full colour. DTG is commonly used to print onto t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, and other apparel.

You can think of the DTG Printer as a very large photo printer. The Printer is a digital process, so you print from an electronic format that is loaded into a RIP Software that then processes the image and sends it to the printer. The printer will then print the image directly onto the garment, once the garment is printed it will need to be heat set to make the print able to be washed.

The process usually can print directly on to white garments without the need to pre-treat the garments, but when printing onto dark garments it will be necessary to pre-treat the garments. Pre-treatment is a chemical solution that has a chemical reaction to the white ink to help it adhere to the T Shirt or apparel. Obviously the ink is specially formulated to work on cotton garments, it is water-based ink that is normally eco friendly, but this may differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.

Some of the benefits of DTG are.

• Low setup cost
• Fast print time on low volume jobs
• Easy maintenance, easy cleaning
• Print directly from photos and digital images
• Perfect process for Print on Demand Business

Some of the setbacks of DTG are.

• Needs to be printed onto 100% Cotton.
• Ink Cost is high compared to screen printing
• Slow print speed compared to screen printing on volume jobs
• Pre-treatment is required for Colour garments

One of the factors that can have a big effect on DTG Print quality is the quality of cotton used to create the T Shirt or apparel, while it is possible to print onto blended garments it is not recommended to print onto garments that have a high polyester or synthetic count, for the best out come it is best to print onto garments that are 80% cotton and 20% Polyester. The higher the polyester the more it will affect the print quality and the longevity of the print.

Using a high quality T Shirt such as the Sportage Fashion T Shirt and the Sportage Legend T Shirt will give the best print quality.

We hope this general overview helps.