# Question for those who have went DTG to print for their brands in house



## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

We have grown our brand to just about 150 full color designs now and we currently outsource our screen printing as doing it in house manually got old after a couple years. We thought about getting an automatic press but felt it would be best to just send everything out and let us focus on growing the brand instead. While it has worked for the most part we have run Into Issues here and there with mostly turnaround times and the occasional bad print. What we have noticed more lately though Is running out of stock. Especially with all the designs we offer now. We try to replenish as much as we can but we have to be smart about doing so, so we don't end up sitting on dead stock but we don't want to order too little where we run out again either. Every time I think we have an inventory formula down something sells out or we have too much of a design and it gets frustrating when you have customers on social media asking for restocks when maybe we are only sold out of mediums. I am considering going DTG to bring the printing in house and try and run our own POD to possibly correct these issues but I am hesitant. Has anyone here went full DTG printing in house with their brand? If so, how is it working out? The good and the bad please. Any feedback Is appreciated. Thank you for your time!


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## NoXid (Apr 4, 2011)

One way to handle the inventory issue for sizes/colors/styles of a given design is to have transfers made and press them yourself onto the desired garment style/size/color as needed. Transfers can be either screen printed or made with digital technology such as DTF. Most of the big online novelty shirt stores used screen printed Plastisol transfers, not sure if they have stayed with that or moved to DTG.

For designs with decent volume, transfers are likely more cost effective than DTG, and a lot less hassle on your end. For full-color designs that threshold would be higher for Plastisol transfers since they are screen printed and every color adds to the cost. DTF is digital, so number of colors is not an issue, but the look/feel is not quite the same as screen printing. Maybe get some samples and see what you think.

DTG in general can be rather fussy, each garment/fabric type requiring a different amount of pretreatment and ink, as well as dark versus light colored garments. Too little pretreatment for the fabric and the ink will sink too far into the garment and look weak, too much and it will sit on top and come off in the wash. Not that one can't get that stuff sorted out, but see a fair number of posts from people having issues ... take a look around in this sub section.


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## schroble (Feb 12, 2008)

We switched to Kornit for our own Brand(s) because its easier to work with for alot of reasons, for Amazon we are making only DTF Transfers now.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

Thank you for the replies. Much appreciated.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

schroble said:


> We switched to Kornit for our own Brand(s) because its easier to work with for alot of reasons, for Amazon we are making only DTF Transfers now.


No offense but all the transfers we received from any Kornit printers were very subpar and smelled of vinegar. DTF is not a good enough quality for us as the majority of the licensing companies we work with would not approve our printing.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

NoXid said:


> One way to handle the inventory issue for sizes/colors/styles of a given design is to have transfers made and press them yourself onto the desired garment style/size/color as needed. Transfers can be either screen printed or made with digital technology such as DTF. Most of the big online novelty shirt stores used screen printed Plastisol transfers, not sure if they have stayed with that or moved to DTG.
> 
> For designs with decent volume, transfers are likely more cost effective than DTG, and a lot less hassle on your end. For full-color designs that threshold would be higher for Plastisol transfers since they are screen printed and every color adds to the cost. DTF is digital, so number of colors is not an issue, but the look/feel is not quite the same as screen printing. Maybe get some samples and see what you think.
> 
> DTG in general can be rather fussy, each garment/fabric type requiring a different amount of pretreatment and ink, as well as dark versus light colored garments. Too little pretreatment for the fabric and the ink will sink too far into the garment and look weak, too much and it will sit on top and come off in the wash. Not that one can't get that stuff sorted out, but see a fair number of posts from people having issues ... take a look around in this sub section.



The majority of our designs are simulated process screen printed and have high detail, transfers will unfortunately not cut it. Also, the feel of transfers just don’t work for us to be honest.

The only option we have seen and felt that was as close to screen printing that we felt comfortable with were samples from an Epson F3070 cured with a conveyor dryer. The print time and cost were sometimes better than our current screen printed price as well. When I say these samples were good, I mean these were insanely good! My thing is I don’t know if going POD in house would make that much of a difference or not. I was hoping to maybe find someone here who has done this for their brand and see how it worked out.


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## schroble (Feb 12, 2008)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> No offense but all the transfers we received from any Kornit printers were very subpar and smelled of vinegar. DTF is not a good enough quality for us as the majority of the licensing companies we work with would not approve our printing.


well DTF is at the moment the best Transfertechnic u can have for small runs in multicolor but ofc its not screenprint.

and for Kornit yeah vinegear smell, Kornit has an odorless Pretreat (no smell at all) but 99% of the Kornit users are not using this, they only use vinegear Pretreat.
For us its like we are able to print near to screenprinting without any smell and Heatpress Frame.
But thats only one way, with Kornit u have one production machine which was for us important.


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## TABOB (Feb 13, 2018)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> Every time I think we have an inventory formula down something sells out or we have too much of a design and it gets frustrating when you have customers on social media asking for restocks when maybe we are only sold out of mediums.


It's just how it is and I have this problem all the time
What I often do is adjust the reprint numbers so the stock ratio goes back to normal.



horrorjunkie33 said:


> The only option we have seen and felt that was as close to screen printing that we felt comfortable with were samples from an Epson F3070 cured with a conveyor dryer.


The speed and bulk ink make the Epson F3070 an excellent machine, but *have you wash tested the sample*?
Producing nice looking prints in DTG is easy. All you have to do is apply too much pretreatmet to the shirt.
The problem is it will fall apart in the wash.
It is of course possible to print a nice looking and durable shirt... but it is as easy as it looks on videos or carefully prepared demos.



horrorjunkie33 said:


> My thing is I don’t know if going POD in house would make that much of a difference or not. I was hoping to maybe find someone here who has done this for their brand and see how it worked out.


My suggestion would be hybrid (screen+CMYK DTG). This is what I do.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

TABOB said:


> It's just how it is and I have this problem all the time
> What I often do is adjust the reprint numbers so the stock ratio goes back to normal.
> 
> Not sure what you mean by this exactly "adjust the reprint numbers so the stock ratio goes back to normal."
> ...


Like the digital squeegee presses by M&R, Roq, etc.?


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## FJG (Aug 11, 2011)

I bought an Epson F2100 to print my designs (mostly surfing and landscape photography) 18 months ago and have ZERO regrets.

Print quality is great, washability is awesome, and only doing the routine maintenance (which isn't much) we haven't run into any issues. We're also printing for other businesses, so the printer is running pretty much every day.


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## TABOB (Feb 13, 2018)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> Like the digital squeegee presses by M&R, Roq, etc.?


If you have the money and the volume. Otherwise any DTG printer will do.



FJG said:


> I bought an Epson F2100 to print my designs (mostly surfing and landscape photography) 18 months ago and have ZERO regrets.
> 
> Print quality is great, washability is awesome, and only doing the routine maintenance (which isn't much) we haven't run into any issues. We're also printing for other businesses, so the printer is running pretty much every day.


The F2100 is a good printer if you can keep it busy and well maintained, but we all know DTG is more than just the printer, and this forum is full of people having problems printing on various garments.
If DTG was so great... hybrid printers would not exist.


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## FJG (Aug 11, 2011)

TABOB said:


> If you have the money and the volume. Otherwise any DTG printer will do.
> 
> 
> The F2100 is a good printer if you can keep it busy and well maintained, but we all know DTG is more than just the printer, and this forum is full of people having problems printing on various garments.
> If DTG was so great... hybrid printers would not exist.


As with everything, if you don't take the time to learn and do things properly then "it sucks".

The only issue I had was with 100% polyester shirts or high poly blends (obviously), but now that we're doing DTF with the F2100 all of our clients that need 100% poly shirts are extremely satisfied with the results.

For what I do and sell, I don't think there would be a better option, within the same price range, that can consistently produce the results we're getting.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

TABOB said:


> If you have the money and the volume. Otherwise any DTG printer will do.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


When pertaining to my original question, going hybrid doesn’t eliminate the idea of being print on demand. For that I would just continue to outsource the screen printing. I was just wondering if there were any brands out there that may have at one point outsourced their printing and then brought it in house with the print on demand approach and if so, how that has worked out for them.


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## FJG (Aug 11, 2011)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> When pertaining to my original question, going hybrid doesn’t eliminate the idea of being print on demand. For that I would just continue to outsource the screen printing. I was just wondering if there were any brands out there that may have at one point outsourced their printing and then brought it in house with the print on demand approach and if so, how that has worked out for them.


We did at first but had terrible experiences due to the colors not matching our designs, poor quality, lack of attention to detail, etc.

Now that we do all of our printing in-house, we have control over all of those issues, and it's a lot easier to manage inventory.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

FJG said:


> We did at first but had terrible experiences due to the colors not matching our designs, poor quality, lack of attention to detail, etc.
> 
> Now that we do all of our printing in-house, we have control over all of those issues, and it's a lot easier to manage inventory.


Do you print on demand in house or print to your stocked inventory? And are you all DTG?


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## FJG (Aug 11, 2011)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> Do you print on demand in house or print to your stocked inventory? And are you all DTG?


Full DTG. I have the print shop right next to my Gallery, so if there's a design a customer wants and we don't have it printed, we'll print it for them before they head out.

Since we also print for other customers, I try to have plenty of white and black shirts in stock to print on demand.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

FJG said:


> Full DTG. I have the print shop right next to my Gallery, so if there's a design a customer wants and we don't have it printed, we'll print it for them before they head out.
> 
> Since we also print for other customers, I try to have plenty of white and black shirts in stock to print on demand.


 Nice! Is this the way you have always ran your shop or Is DTG something you added? Just curious If maybe you used to screen print and added DTG instead and If so, what have been the advantages if any.


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## TABOB (Feb 13, 2018)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> When pertaining to my original question, going hybrid doesn’t eliminate the idea of being print on demand.


Not if you want to print single shirts on demand, but can be used for small runs (ie the sold out M size shirts you mentioned).



horrorjunkie33 said:


> I was just wondering if there were any brands out there that may have at one point outsourced their printing and then brought it in house with the print on demand approach and if so, how that has worked out for them.


I think the best thing to do is buy a used DTG printer and judge for yourself.
You can then sell the printer a few months later for the same money... Nothing to loose.


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## aidensnd (Apr 24, 2016)

Sorry, this is going to be long...

DTG to me is all about pretreating. That's where all the technique, tricks and issues are.

We are a clothing brand (we sell online through our website and Amazon and also wholesale), and did this exact thing. We had probably a hundred or so designs, most in multiple colorways, between t-shirts, tanks, long sleeves, raglans, hoodies, sweatshirts, sweat shorts, women's shirts, women's tanks, women's sweatshirts and hoodies, kid's clothing etc... Basically a 5000 sq/ft warehouse full of inventory. For years we outsourced all of our screen printing and eventually it got to a point where dealing with broken size runs in a cost/time effective manner, the cost of stranded odds & ends from discontinued styles, bad sellers etc got to be a pain in the ***.

Thought about getting a smallish screen printing setup, 6 color, compact dryer etc, so that we could do small runs in house. Quickly ruled that out as impractical/inefficient as apart from letting us do size specific runs it wouldn't really solve all the issues and then we'd have to deal with making/reclaiming screens etc. Just more work for not much gain. 

Bought a GT-381, this was before the GTX, and a Belquette Edge pretreater, with the intent/hope of eventually transitioning to printing everything in-house. Planned on giving myself a year to get it dialed in to the point where I was happy sending them out to customers. I had done a ton of research in advance and am pretty handy mechanically so I figured basic issues I'd be able to handle and if reliability/speed became an issue I was willing to buy additional or different machines. 

We print on either 100% cotton or 60/40 cotton/poly heathers. The plan was to start with the one color black and white designs as there wouldn't be any color matching so they should go the fastest. First thing I realized was that getting the pretreat dialed in was going to be a pain in the ***. I'm a perfectionist and having a visible pretreat box was not acceptable. Black ink on white shirts was fine, even black on 60/40 light heathers was acceptable as most of our shirts are distressed or vintage looking so they aren't intended to be super bright and pop. Multi color on white was a success also. Decided to try plastisol transfers for the single colors on darks. Perfect. Faster, easier, great durability and feel.

I played around with pretreating for a year and then gave up. I tried different brands of PT, every amount and dilution variation I could think of, brushing it on, hand spraying. I made a template that feathered the edge of the pretreat etc... For a time we tried washing each shirt before they went out which was ok but impractical. Sure I could include a note with each shirt explaining that the box would go away after a wash or two but that wasn't professional enough for me and it wouldn't work for wholesale either. 

In the end I gave up on pretreating and use the DTG for light shirts only. For my darks I use plastisol transfers or I still outsource screen printing. If I could have gotten it to the point where the pretreat was completely unnoticeable I would definitely be using it for some things but still not everything. For single colors - transfers would still be my go to. The ease, speed, cost and reliability can't be beat. If you mainly sell white shirts then DTG would be ideal. If you sell mostly multi-color designs on black shirts then it will come down to the pretreat.

My main issue now is finding good transfers. I have been using Versatranz but my last order had more pinholes or adhesive overspray than I've ever seen, and the customer service has gone down dramatically recently. Actually having another problem with them now which has made to decide to look for a new supplier.

Having said all that, I suppose it just comes down to your unique situation and what's acceptable to you. For us, even with the DTG printing not working out as well as we hoped, it was still a great move overall. Having to store mainly blanks instead of inventory has let us scale down from a 5000 sq ft warehouse with $500k worth of inventory to essentially a space the size of a 4 car garage with $30k of blanks. The ability to offer new designs with no out of pocket costs is huge also, one off customs, etc... 

Done rambling.


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## TABOB (Feb 13, 2018)

aidensnd said:


> DTG to me is all about pretreating. That's where all the technique, tricks and issues are.





aidensnd said:


> First thing I realized was that getting the pretreat dialed in was going to be a pain in the ***.





aidensnd said:


> I played around with pretreating for a year and then gave up.





aidensnd said:


> For a time we tried washing each shirt before they went out which was ok but impractical.





aidensnd said:


> In the end I gave up on pretreating and use the DTG for light shirts only.


This is like reading my own post... 
Identical experience.



aidensnd said:


> Having to store mainly blanks instead of inventory has let us scale down from a 5000 sq ft warehouse with $500k worth of inventory to essentially a space the size of a 4 car garage with $30k of blanks.


My solution to is using self storage units for the blanks (very cheap) and ship the printed shirts to my clients immediately.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

aidensnd said:


> Sorry, this is going to be long...
> 
> DTG to me is all about pretreating. That's where all the technique, tricks and issues are.
> 
> ...


Great feedback! I would assume you saw an Increase In sales by going POD. If so, what percentage would you say your sales Increased by? Unless you just overstocked when you had preprinted products on hand and never sold out of anything?


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## FJG (Aug 11, 2011)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> Nice! Is this the way you have always ran your shop or Is DTG something you added? Just curious If maybe you used to screen print and added DTG instead and If so, what have been the advantages if any.


I tried dye sublimation for my shirts about 7 years ago and hated it. Shortly after that, I was able to get my hands on a Brother GT 541 (CMYK only) and ran with that for a few years. It was very limiting since I couldn't print any dark shirts, and with my wave pictures having white in them I would only print on white shirts. I got rid of the GT 541 in August 2020 and bought the F2100.

We'll only wash light-colored shirts if they're pre-treated prior to putting them in the shop or mailing them so that they don't stain when exposed to the sun. We managed to figure out pre-treatment issues fairly quickly (with huge help from a few members of this forum) and have been able to produce great results without having to wash the shirts after printing.

Once I got the F2100, my t-shirt sales went from 15-20 shirts a month to 90-130 shirts a month plus we're printing between 600 to 800 shirts a month for other clients. I haven't done ANY promotion for the print shop, and only have one employee at the moment that only works 20-30 hours a week. I'm sure once I finish the website and start promoting the print shop, those numbers will go up quickly.

My name is on every shirt I sell at my Gallery and online store, so I pay a LOT of attention to every detail on the shirts and the quality of the prints prior to selling them.

Does it take some patience? Definitely. Perhaps I was lucky to be able to figure out the pre-treatment and printing process, but I am extremely satisfied with our F2100 and would not consider going with any other method of printing for my designs.


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

Anyone here have experience with the Epson F3070 as that Is the printer I am Interested In? Would love to know both the good and the bad.


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## sgsellsit1 (Mar 31, 2021)

If your customers are already accustomed to authentic screen printed items then you will kill your brand by sending out junk like transfers and dtg. These are for low quality one offs and low runs. If you think maintaining inventory is expensive, try buying and maintaining a dtg machine. DTG printers are expensive and are constantly wanting some kind of attention. You also need pretreating equipment and chemicals plus either a heat press or pretreat dryer. 
I have been called on to maintain and repair more than my fair share of dtg machines. The amount of customers you will lose and the return orders will add to that cost. Use transfers if you want people to think they are buying shirts from a cheesy sidewalk vendor. Just my two cents as I have used all these means. And before everyone blasts me for this advice, I am an over 30 year veteran of the textile industry and was actually around it as a kid. I worked for contracts like Nike, NCAA, Disney, Harley Davidson just to name a few. They for the most part have stuck to their formula. I have just about seen it all, even the failure of the first dtg machines years ago. I still have a screen print, sign and embroidery business so I am still trudging through these weird times.


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## FJG (Aug 11, 2011)

sgsellsit1 said:


> If your customers are already accustomed to authentic screen printed items then you will kill your brand by sending out junk like transfers and dtg. These are for low quality one offs and low runs. If you think maintaining inventory is expensive, try buying and maintaining a dtg machine. DTG printers are expensive and are constantly wanting some kind of attention. You also need pretreating equipment and chemicals plus either a heat press or pretreat dryer.
> I have been called on to maintain and repair more than my fair share of dtg machines. The amount of customers you will lose and the return orders will add to that cost. Use transfers if you want people to think they are buying shirts from a cheesy sidewalk vendor. Just my two cents as I have used all these means. And before everyone blasts me for this advice, I am an over 30 year veteran of the textile industry and was actually around it as a kid. I worked for contracts like Nike, NCAA, Disney, Harley Davidson just to name a few. They for the most part have stuck to their formula. I have just about seen it all, even the failure of the first dtg machines years ago. I still have a screen print, sign and embroidery business so I am still trudging through these weird times.


Weird. I have a lot of customers that came/come to me because they prefer the quality of DTG over screen printing for their designs. Also, in 18 months I have had one shirt returned and it was actually an exchange, the customer wanted a larger size t-shirt. This is including both my designs and shirts I print for other clients.

Maintenance-wise, I believe my only expenses are the head cleaning kits, cleaning cartridge, and ink when it does the head cleanings. For the amount of prints we're doing, the maintenance cost of the F2100 is fairly low and the process is super simple.

How long ago did you try DTG printing for the last time and what machine was it?


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## horrorjunkie33 (Sep 3, 2016)

sgsellsit1 said:


> If your customers are already accustomed to authentic screen printed items then you will kill your brand by sending out junk like transfers and dtg. These are for low quality one offs and low runs. If you think maintaining inventory is expensive, try buying and maintaining a dtg machine. DTG printers are expensive and are constantly wanting some kind of attention. You also need pretreating equipment and chemicals plus either a heat press or pretreat dryer.
> I have been called on to maintain and repair more than my fair share of dtg machines. The amount of customers you will lose and the return orders will add to that cost. Use transfers if you want people to think they are buying shirts from a cheesy sidewalk vendor. Just my two cents as I have used all these means. And before everyone blasts me for this advice, I am an over 30 year veteran of the textile industry and was actually around it as a kid. I worked for contracts like Nike, NCAA, Disney, Harley Davidson just to name a few. They for the most part have stuck to their formula. I have just about seen it all, even the failure of the first dtg machines years ago. I still have a screen print, sign and embroidery business so I am still trudging through these weird times.


I have both screen printed (at a very high level) and worked with DTG. I can assure you when done right a DTG print can rival a screen print. Especially if it’s a sim process type design. If you need proof shoot me your email and I will send pics. Also, I have asked numerous customers to compare prints and most prefer the look and feel of the DTG print compared to the screen print. Now mind you, we use plastisol (with soft hand additive) and the print is a bit heavier than the DTG so that could be some of the reason. I am old school and have always been hardcore screen print or nothing but, the customers honestly don’t care as much as we would like to think believe it or not. My biggest thing is just wether or not is the way to go for a business model. Not so much the quality as I know if done right it looks and feels great. DTF on the other hand, not so much.


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## rcfryer (May 22, 2020)

horrorjunkie33 said:


> We have grown our brand to just about 150 full color designs now and we currently outsource our screen printing as doing it in house manually got old after a couple years. We thought about getting an automatic press but felt it would be best to just send everything out and let us focus on growing the brand instead. While it has worked for the most part we have run Into Issues here and there with mostly turnaround times and the occasional bad print. What we have noticed more lately though Is running out of stock. Especially with all the designs we offer now. We try to replenish as much as we can but we have to be smart about doing so, so we don't end up sitting on dead stock but we don't want to order too little where we run out again either. Every time I think we have an inventory formula down something sells out or we have too much of a design and it gets frustrating when you have customers on social media asking for restocks when maybe we are only sold out of mediums. I am considering going DTG to bring the printing in house and try and run our own POD to possibly correct these issues but I am hesitant. Has anyone here went full DTG printing in house with their brand? If so, how is it working out? The good and the bad please. Any feedback Is appreciated. Thank you for your time!


I have been printing DTG for over 7 years with an Omniprint Freejet 330TX printer. I recently started using the same printer to make DTF transfers using the same ink I use for the DTG printing. I like the Omniprint printer because it has a wet sump for the print head when the machine is not in use. I have only replaced the printhead once, about two years ago. While tech support has been slow, Omniprint usually gets back to me in about a day, and once connected, they have been very helpful. I would prefer it if they would respond quicker. That being said, I would still recommend them for a DTG/DTF printer.


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