# Pre Treatment



## DesignsbyMBP (Jan 8, 2008)

Hello everyone, quick question.

How necessary is it to pre treat garments that are going to be printed Direct To Garment? Is it nec. and why is it important? Some shirts that I would like to use are not 100% cotton, they are sheer and almost gauze like and they cannot really handle the pretreatment. IS this issue solvable? Is there a way I can print DTG on these shirts for a long lasting t or no? What purpose does the treatment serve?


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Pretreatment is only necessary when printing white ink or if you are printing on a non-natural fabric or blend shirt. The pretreatment for white ink is used for cheaping the white ink from soaking into the fibers of the shirt and then allowing the shirt color to alter the colors of your CMYK graphic. Pretreating for other type of fabrics that are not natural is because the ink has a hard time binding to the synthetic fibers of the fabric.

Now there are more people that are pretreating to light garments using CMYK only ink because it make the print a little brighter and usually last longer in the wash depending on how the pretreatment is applied. This type of pretreatment tends to have a lighter hand to it.

What is the exact fabric content that you are printing on. There are people that print on a see-through fabric using dye sub (i.e. see the tattoo shirts where the sleeves are decorated sublimation prints only a panty hose like material). That might be another option depending on what the fabric is and whether it is going to be washed or not. Just an alternative to think about.

Hope this helps.

Mark


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