# DtG printing question: feels like decal?



## DaystarProducts (Jan 26, 2017)

My boss has asked me to investigate a garment printing device of some kind. We put a fair amount of money into a couple apparel shops so of course... it's got to be easy. We can do it!

We've got two suppliers that provide apparel to us. Both call their output Direct to Garment. Both have completely different feels to them.

The first looks and feels like a decal adhered to the shirt. Like a thin iron on I printed off my inkjet, but a little better. It's not as thick and heavy as screen printing. It looks good for a while but eventually stretches, cracks, and breaks. 

The second shirt is literally printed on the cloth. You can see the ink in individual threads. It holds color well and doesn't break up do to twisting, stretching, and washing. And, most importantly, doesn't feel like you're wearing a big decals on your chest or back.

Both shops are calling their output Direct to Garment but both provide completely different results.

Who's pulling my leg?


----------



## KelceyW (Dec 1, 2016)

The second is Direct To Garment, an ink jet printer for fabric. not sure what the first is.


----------



## FBNick (Oct 21, 2015)

It looks like you're too new to be allowed to post pics, but if you can link to pictures of the shirts that may help


----------



## rklovestruck (May 1, 2015)

Are the prints on the same color garment? When printing on white or very light garments no underbase or pretreat is needed and the ink dyes the fabric so with your eyes closed you could not tell it was even printed. When printing on darks there is a pretreat layer (usually salty liquid) then a layer of white ink, and a layer of color ink which thickens the feel of the print. After it is washed a few times it softens but you will always be able to feel a thin layer since that technically lays on top of the garment. It does feel different from screen printing which is generally thick with multiple hits of plastisol.

Was the first printed in a square shape?


----------



## DaystarProducts (Jan 26, 2017)

The "bad" shirt was white and not square. 

The "good" shirt was a very light tan and you can see the color shift due to the material's color. You can NOT feel any ink in the garment.


----------



## WGiant (Oct 15, 2015)

DaystarProducts said:


> The "bad" shirt was white and not square.


Kind of a sounds like a home printer using transfer paper, but they used something intended for a dark garment, which wasn't necessary at all for a white shirt.




DaystarProducts said:


> The "good" shirt was a very light tan and you can see the color shift due to the material's color. You can NOT feel any ink in the garment.


This sounds like a "Direct to Garment" printer, which is printing directly onto the shirt.


If you're going to be doing designs on dark shirts you should look into examples of "Direct to Garment White Ink" printing. I personally do not think DtG is a good choice for the average shop printing on dark shirts, here's my post on the subject.


----------



## DaystarProducts (Jan 26, 2017)

WGiant said:


> If you're going to be doing designs on dark shirts you should look into examples of "Direct to Garment White Ink" printing. I personally do not think DtG is a good choice for the average shop printing on dark shirts, here's my post on the subject.


Is this a general belief or specific to the DTG equipment? Epson F2000 any better? Better with equipment that prints white and CMYK in the same pass?


----------



## WGiant (Oct 15, 2015)

DaystarProducts said:


> Is this a general belief or specific to the DTG equipment? Epson F2000 any better? Better with equipment that prints white and CMYK in the same pass?


The CMYK ink is pretty similar to other printer inks. It passes easily through a print head and while it has very little oppasity it does have good vibrancy.

The White ink is more like paint. Shoving this heavy ink through a print head is really rough on it. It has oppasity, but at the cost of durability, and needing pretreatment for it to sit properly on the shirt fibers. And, there's a reason most machines have 4 white channels, you're going to be laying down way a lot of white ink to build up that oppasity. This costs money.

A salesperson is of course going to tell you whichever DtG machine you're looking at doesn't have these problems, but it does exist across all platforms.


----------

