# DTP print quality disclaimer?



## Vtec44 (Apr 24, 2006)

I got 2 white samples from DTG America on Sat, and they're as I expected (great looking but faded a bit after first wash but stayed about the same in many washes after). I'm just curious to see if the other DTG printers out there explain to the customers about the differences in print quality. 

I'm anxiously waiting for the black samples.


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Here are my thoughts on this subject. Every application has its benefits and I like to explain them to a customer. Most industry experts will agree that dye sublimation is the longest lasting decorating technique. Thus, it should cost more than any other technique and it is limited to certain types of fabrics and colors. Screen printing is great for some designs and in medium to large runs. However in my opinion (and I know Rodney will disagree with me), screen printing designs should only expect to last 20-30 washing before the print cracks. DTG prints are about the same as screen printing (on light colors), but better for short runs where the customer is willing to pay a premium. I am not a fan of dark dtg prints at all. Too much potential problems with the pretreatment and keeping the same quality. Traditional heat transfers last even less and have a heavier hand, but are cheaper for short runs. 

I like to ask what the shirts are going to be used for and give examples as to when one application is more appropriate than the others. One of the best things I have found is to have examples of the same or similar designs done with the different applications (and their price) and let the customer decide. This is not really possible if you are focused on selling via the internet since you can't really see the shirt upclose and touch it.

I am not sure if it is the best thing to put a disclaimer on your website or wall that states you expect your shirt to fade. You might want to emphasize that using proper washing techniques will extend the life of your garment and the print. Then state what the proper washing techniques are.

Others will probably have a different opinion.


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

DAGuide said:


> Screen printing is great for some designs and in medium to large runs. However in my opinion (and I know Rodney will disagree with me), screen printing designs should only expect to last 20-30 washing before the print cracks.


Not just Rodney  It's simply wrong. Sure I've seen shirts that were badly printed crack before then, and I've seen shirts that were badly washed crack before then. But a professional print will definitely last longer than 20-30 washes.


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## Jasonda (Aug 16, 2006)

DAGuide said:


> Screen printing is great for some designs and in medium to large runs. However in my opinion (and I know Rodney will disagree with me), screen printing designs should only expect to last 20-30 washing before the print cracks.


I also disagree, and just so you know, I'm not a screenprinter. I have some shirts that have cracked after about a year of wear (30 washes or more), but I have plenty of shirts that are so old that the fabric itself is coming apart, but the print is still well intact (just a little faded).


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

That all depends on what the garment is used for and how it is clean. I have no problem if it is a standard shirt that someone wears once every week or two around the house. Screen print a little league or flag football shirt and see how long it last. I know the shirts / jerseys that I had would barely last a season. The shirt gets stretched while being worn, most people use aggressive laundry detergent additives to get them clean and just don't take the same care as other clothing. I know that I over dry my clothing in the dryer. If I am the only one that does this, then that might explain my beliefs. I am not knocking screen printing at all. It definitely has its place and will always even with better dtg technology.


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## Jasonda (Aug 16, 2006)

Shirts for kid's sports are exposed to stress above and beyond typical wear and tear. Kids are so active they often wear out their clothes in a few months.

I don't think you're the only one who overdries your clothes, either..  I frequently bake mine to a crisp.


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## monkeylantern (Oct 16, 2005)

If your screenprinting is ruined after 20-30 washes, you seriously need a new printer.


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

DAGuide said:


> That all depends on what the garment is used for and how it is clean.


True.



DAGuide said:


> Screen print a little league or flag football shirt and see how long it last.


Why on earth would I use a little league shirt as my metric? That's just... confusing.


(anyway, this thread is getting hijacked - I would try and comment on the DTG angle, but I don't have the experience with DTG to say)


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## Vtec44 (Apr 24, 2006)

Wow, this thread has gone way off LOL. Anywho, we do screen print and vinyl press primarily, but are seriously looking into adding a DTG printer, maybe even 2. It's all about that first initial wash, current DTG ink just can't hold it on the initial wash as well as screen print, at least based on our experience. That's not a big deal, there are pros and cons for each method and we just want to make sure to set the expectations. The thing I hate the most is when a customer expects something then got something completely different. That's all


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## Big E (Jan 2, 2007)

We noticed our DTG printed shirts would fade slightly after the 1st washing so we started curing them by bringing the heat press head down to within 1" of the print for about 1 minute, then would cover with a teflon sheet and cure it for 90 second at 375 degrees. This seems to help get a better cure. (we were able to have it on the heat press that long because we were doing 2 passes for a photograph.) This is on a DTG Kiosk. 

As for silkscreening, we figure a print should survive about 2 years. When we started in business many of our customers complained after 6 or 8 months their prints were cracking apart. I decided to turn up the heat (to the point where you don't damage the garment) and slow down the belt speed and we haven't had any complants about the shirts or the prints. Once the word spread that our printing was durable our business took off. That was about 14 years ago.


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## Don-ColDesi (Oct 18, 2006)

Having sold hundreds of these printers and printed literally thousands of shirts with DTG printers I can say that fading should be minimal on DTG printed shirts "IF THEY ARE PROPERLY HEAT SET!". I like to use a popcorn analogy to describe the way that DTG inks set. When the binders in the ink reach 300' F they begin to set (pop) and they will continue to set (pop) as long as the temeprature remains above 300' F - until the majority are set (popped) - as with popcorn - all of the kernels won't pop (set), no matter how long you set them. When you wash the garment - any pigments that were not set will wash out, that is the reason for the initial "fade" and then flat line - once the unset pigments wash out - the balance of pigments are pretty much permanent. We choose to set our inks at a lower temperature (325' F) at a longer time (90 seconds) than most distributors as we feel that this allows more time to "pop" with less "unpopped kernels" and little chance of scorching the garment - resulting in a longer wearing print.

In regards to DA Guide's comment about sublimation being the longest lasting, try wearing a sublimated garment out in sunlight a number of times - it will fade significantly - sublimation is noted for it's dislike for UV light.

JMHO


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Don,

I am very familiar with the effects of UV on dye sub as well as other applications. UV rays will kill any shirt after an extended period of time. The same goes for bleach. I guess my issue with all of this is everyone keeps saying when the shirt is "properly cured." There are plenty of examples of people getting shirts from all different types of applications where the shirts have not held up and probably a lot more where they have been. To me, its about understanding the expectation of the customer. (Back to the original thread since I feel I am partly to blame for it being sidetracked). If I am your customer and you tell me that the shirt should easily look the same for 50+ washes (your disclaimer or warranty), I am expecting that shirt to look the same in two years if I wear the shirt once every two weeks. I would rather under-promise and over-deliver. Just my opinion. If it does not look the same, you are almost stating that you will refund the money or replace the shirt. That would be tough to do with all the costs that go into screen printing.

I do think it is important to tell people about the proper washing techniques. This would be the disclaimer that I would put. I would stay away from saying that a dtg print expects a X-XX% of fading after the first wash. Most of the time, the customers will not even notice the fading unless they hold two shirts side-by-side. We are our own worse critics.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> I'm just curious to see if the other DTG printers out there explain to the customers about the differences in print quality.


I think that some do and some don't 

I think with any print process (screen printing, vinyl, heat press, embroidery, dye sub, etc) where you are doing custom printing for customers, it's a good idea to _*educate the customer*_ as much as possible about what to expect from your process.

Sometimes the customer may have certain expectations or presuppositions about a process (like going to a screen printer after seeing an inkjet transfer and wanting a photo to look exactly like a JPG with no halftones or expecting this run of screen printed t-shirts to look exactly like their last run when one printer might use heavier ink coverage and one might normally use a lighter coverage).

I try to explain to customers whenever possible so *they* can make the best choice for their needs with no surprises with the finished result. 

I wouldn't call it a _disclaimer_ though, because that gives some negative connotations about the printing process that might turn off or confuse the customer (speaking generally here).

You can "real life" example of how this is done at CafePress. They try to pre-educate the customers (the ones that care to know) by giving them all the info on their different printing process:
Baseball Jersey : reggae : CafePress.com

Right under their "Add to Cart" button they have a link that says "Direct Printing" which links to this page:
Help Desk : Powered by CafePress.com

That helps to inform the customer about what to expect from their different printing processes and gives a little side by side info.


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## Vtec44 (Apr 24, 2006)

Great links Rodney, thanks!


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

in personal experience, it depends on the *fabric *you are printing on that will determine the quality of the dtg print. 
remember, you are printing pigments _into _the fabric.

we've printed private label for customers who provided their own shirts from american apparel. after we printed them, the shirts looked beautiful. the customer was extremely pleased. then the next day, they test washed it once and the print looked fuzzy and light. and _of course _they blamed the printing. 
we were concerned about what if this really was a problem, so we did a test. we printed the same exact print on two different shirts. one from american apparel, and one of our own custom blank. after print, they both looked equal in quality. we then took both shirts, turned them inside out, and put them in a normal home washer machine in cold water on the gentle cycle & afterwards we tumble dried them on low heat. after we pulled them out, the differences between the two were evident.

the american apparel shirt looked the exactly the same as before. fuzzy, light, blurry. the print on our blank had very slight fading (which is normal) but it wasnt blurry or fuzzy at the edges of the print. upon further inspection, we discovered why. the american apparel shirt's fabric had pilled throughout the entire shirt. *it was the pilling of the fabric that caused the print to become lighter and out of focus.*


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

Rodney said:


> I think that some do and some don't
> 
> I think with any print process (screen printing, vinyl, heat press, embroidery, dye sub, etc) where you are doing custom printing for customers, it's a good idea to _*educate the customer*_ as much as possible about what to expect from your process.
> 
> ...


 



to try to aliviate this problem, we simply put it on our hangtags.
we incorporated this disclaimer with our company bio explaining that
"each garment will have slight variations within the print and finishes that are inherent in the process of making the total tee."


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> to try to aliviate this problem, we simply put it on our hangtags.
> we incorporated this disclaimer with our company bio explaining that
> "each garment will have slight variations within the print and finishes that are inherent in the process of making the total tee."


Very nicely worded!


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

Rodney said:


> Very nicely worded!


 
aw thanks rodney =)
i try. haha

i just hope i dont see that same exact wording on 10 million other hang-tags 
or im going to have to grab a thesaurus n think of something else lol


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

im lucky that my line is able to get away with all the slight differences because our product is a upscale vintage tee shirt line. 

i figure that since this is a vintage tee line, people who buy it want something unique, and our shirts are just that. no two shirts will be alike bkuz of the dtg print process and because of the unpredictability of the garment dyes n finishes.


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## tomtv (Feb 6, 2007)

vtech,

I have been around the direct to garment thing almost since the beginning like don. I have seen them all etc. I will say that the printers using the R & H inks and the brother have had the best or should i say least color loss on the initial wash up til now. I think it would be worth your while to look at the prints from the new sawgrass direct advantage and do a wash test. i have been really impressed with the color hold on the initial and multiple washings. They have leveraged their knowledge and manufacturing of dye sub inks into their direct to garment inks and it has paid off. I am a little biased, as we all are, so I encourage you to do the tests yourself, talk to people and go with what you feel if the right thing for you and your business model.

tom


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## Don-ColDesi (Oct 18, 2006)

tom,

you forgot to mention the $1 per cc (ml) price of the sawgrass ink, industry standard is about 30-35 cents per cc. You gotta factor that in, since it is a reason you use against printing on darks. no doubt that sawgrass will produce a good ink, but, no doubt they will also be the most expensive by far.

cheers


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Don is right. Ink cost is a big thing. From what I have learned, the reason why the ink cost more is that Sawgrass is only selling the ink in cartridges. Matt Rhome (the gentleman that helped bring the Brother DTG to market) likes to use cartridges because it is a more controlled environment and minimizes the opportunity for introducing air bubbles into the ink line (which I believe is suppose to help you have less downtime when printing). Since the cartridge is full enclosed or sealed, you don't have this problem. I know that Matt has stated that although the ink is similar in cost to the Brother ink, it has a much higher ink yield (or whatever he called it). It was explained to me that the Sawgrass ink requires you to use about 50% less ink than what the Brother dtg machine does. If this is the case, then the best thing to do is evaluate the machines on their cost per a print. Most of the dtg machines have some way to calculate the amount of ink used to print a design either on the machine or in the software. Everyone will need to do some math, but you should be able to figure out what the cost per print is. I have not done this yet with the Sawgrass machine, so I don't know if the statement above is true. Just what I am being told by Sawgrass.

There really are a lot of factors to consider when looking at which dtg works best for your company. Don't forget that the service / support factor! There are a lot of new machines out there. Best wishes with everyones research.


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## tomtv (Feb 6, 2007)

Now Don...

I agree the price on the ink is higher than what you are calling the industry standard. Mark brought up the yield issue but i am not even considering that.

But to compare the increase of approx. .30 per shirt on a light garment using the sawgrass ink does not compare to the 3.50 or more for the increase when printing dark shirts when using white ink on the machines using white in currently. We have talked about this many times and I appreciate the way you are up front and honest about the real world issues with white ink cost and the issue that it is not ready for prime time and production. 

Anywho, your point is well noted on the cmyk difference but I can tell you that the wash tests I have done absolutely prove to me the benefit of their ink. the loss on initial washability is really great and is a factor with customer satisfaction. I am not at all saying that the other ink manufacturers have good results but there is a noticable difference in my opinion. That was a real factor in our decision on this machine.

Tom


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

i believe almost everybody in this forum is "somebody from somewhere"
i dont think its necessary to bring that point up.


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

has anyone factored in the amount of money that is being flushed with the ink everytime the printer needs a normal or power head cleaning? everyday is different. some days the head prints impeccably with very little need to clean. some days. omg SOME DAYS all we do is power clean and flush just to get the same print quality as the day before


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## tomtv (Feb 6, 2007)

deana,

I know the units based off the 4800 can give you that info. there is an ink counter built in to the printer, not the software, that can easily be reset before a power cleaning so you can measure it. I will look in another forum i am part of and see if i can find the info someone posted once.

are you using a bulk system or cartridges on your machine? it really does not seem right that you are having to do power cleanings with any regularity.

tom


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## MZDEELO (Oct 14, 2006)

tomtv said:


> deana,
> 
> I know the units based off the 4800 can give you that info. there is an ink counter built in to the printer, not the software, that can easily be reset before a power cleaning so you can measure it. I will look in another forum i am part of and see if i can find the info someone posted once.
> 
> ...


 
i kno it counts the ink being used, but its hardly if ever the same amount everyday. it can make things difficult when it comes to pricing shirts because or the irregularity.



the main reason we have to flush extensively somedays is because of the white ink not flowing through. it would be nice to have a function where we can choose to clean & flush just the white inks without wasting the color inks which 99& of the time work perfectly fine


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## tomtv (Feb 6, 2007)

Deana,

You are not alone in wishing the white could be flushed seperately from the others. This really is one of those hidden issues when dealing with the white ink printing. 

I am sure you are keeping cleaning solution in your capping station when you have the printer off at night as well as shaking up the inks every week at least etc. so it is tough to say what else you can do to make things work better.

I hope your manufacturer will take care of you on this and i hope it gets better with a whole lot less cleanings needed.

tom


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