# Color Fade Issue DTG Printing



## syedasim321 (May 15, 2016)

Hi Everyone,

It has been almost 1.5 years since an idea came to my mind to start an online custom t-shirt printing web-store. Before i didn't knew anything about t-shirt printing. After allot of research through web i decided to use DTG as most suitable option for my web-store.

Wasted allot of money in getting things working i.e DTG printer, ink, maintenance and blank t-shirts, now my web-store is online, launched and fulfilled almost 100 orders. But so far, we are not able to get the foundation stable i.e. Print quality and blank T-shirt quality. 

Print Quality: Bought ink from china after trying many sellers; the current ink we are using is good but still not reliable as the print fades after few washes. Secondly, we did not yet succeeded in printing the white Ink as the quality is really not acceptable, has to print multiple passes, wash-ability as usual is worst.

T-shirt Quality: Tried few brands i.e Gildan, Fruit of the loom, Anvil and lastly B&C (not Bella+canvas) but still the quality is not same as the one available in retail store. Gildan is not good for printing, fruit of loom's fabric is not good and lastly B&C fabric is good however there color fade problem (the t-shirt color) plus all three of these has different size i.e Gildan is huge B&C has longer and Fruit of some is better in size.

The reason why i wrote all of this above is to give you an idea of what i have been through so far, and you may relate to my situation. 

Please help me in getting the right t-shirt suitable for our web-store, and more importantly how to get rid of print fade issue. As customers are not really happy with the quality and when we started our first was to make customer happy and maintain loyalty with customers. once we get our print and quality issue fixed we will definitely make our existing customer happy by re-sending the shirt they have ordered.

Any help and advise will be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.


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## zerg71 (Sep 9, 2014)

Hi,



syedasim321 said:


> Print Quality: Bought ink from china after trying many sellers;


Words "quality" and "China" seldom goes true in one sentence. As for printing only CMYK it could be acceptable, then for CMYK+W i haven't read any possitive thing about chinese inks. 

Have you tried Image Armor or FireBird? They're tested by many users and so far they're top shelf. 

To avoid fading you can pretreat the shirt with special liquid for light garments. Sounds stupid, but if you want to avoid fading it's an option. 

Remember that DTG is faaaar awaaay from screenprinting when it comes to quality and washability, no matter what DTG suppliers says. Kornit is an exception but there is a huge difference in the whole process and chemistry. 




syedasim321 said:


> Tried few brands i.e Gildan, Fruit of the loom, Anvil and lastly B&C


From the brands you mentioned, I haven't tried only Anvil. But Gildan, FOTL and B&C are just rags for me. I would never wear shirt like this. 

Check out one of the following:
www.adler.info
www.promostars.com

T-shirting is not an easy bread... Personally I hate it.


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## syedasim321 (May 15, 2016)

You are right, it's not that easy as it seems to be. It took me allot of time to just know about the basics. imagine it took me more than 1.5 years and still i have not figured out what will work.. 

What do you recommend should i stick with DTG and try different t-shirts and inks. or switch to a different printing technique for my custom t-shirt printing business? 

Are you a user of DTG printer, if not what technique you use for printing?

Thanks


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## zerg71 (Sep 9, 2014)

I am DTG user, I print on two Polyprint Texjets plus. I use Polyprint Power Inks but I assume that they're FireBird inks in other bottle with other sticker. I am just an employee so that's not my decision which inks to use. Washability is terrible. CMYK prints fades after few washes (I don't pretreat) but at least it lasts on the shirt. CMYK+W prints after few washes just disappear. I can rub them from the shirt like the old paint from the wall. To the point that you will never notice that there was beautiful print someday. People say that I use to much PT, but it doesn't matter if I use more or less. I tried to dillute it with water, use less, use more, cure at different time/temp. And what I can say is that it's a lie that DTG is "almost" like screenprinting. 

I also use vinyl transfers (my favourite technique because there's almost nothing that can go wrong) but it's only for simple shapes / sings that you can cut with cutter and then weed it. 

I also use sublimation and it's much more durable than DTG but it's only for polyester. Or polyester blends (min 50% poly). Print is lasting forever. 

If I were you I will look around for someone who uses Kornit and outsource the jobs to him. And maybe some day when your buisness grow, buy one but it's $$$$$$ expensive.


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