Direct To Garment Printing- also abbreviated to DTG Printing – is a digital print technique. DTG printers are full colour inkjet printers which print a design directly onto textiles or garments. DTG printers can produce high quality photo-realistic print results, and because there are no setup fees associated with this print technique, they are our default method for all one-off prints, photo prints, sample runs and delicate full colour designs.

HOW IT WORKS

We often compare our Direct-To-Garment printer to a household desktop printer; just instead of printing on a piece of paper, we print directly onto a piece of t-shirt!

The shirt is loaded into the DTG printer manually by laying it onto a flat print platen, ensuring it sits nice and straight. Once the design file is loaded into the printer, the print command is made with the push of a button and our state of the art printer performs the print.

A Difference in colour

Direct To Garment Printing works on both white and coloured textiles but is limited to garments that are made from at least 50% cotton. For printing on coloured or dark apparel, the printer needs to print a white undercoat onto the garment first. This requires the garments to be pre-treated so that the white ink particles can bond with the colour pigment in the garment fabric. Due to these additional labour steps, it is generally cheaper to print on white textiles, than on non-whites.

As the pre-treatment acts like a surface for the white ink and subsequent coloured top layer inks to sit on, you can expect a higher colour brilliance when printing on coloured or black garments compared to printing on white garments. As coloured designs can be printed directly onto white fabrics, the inks are ‘soaked’ up by the garment fibre and show therefore a slightly duller colour result.

Soft Feel

Direct-To-Garments prints delight in their soft feel; prints on white textiles can’t be felt at all if you run your hand over. Prints on pre-treated garments can be felt slightly as a somewhat waxy feel. Because the inks ‘sink’ into the garment fibre as opposed to sitting on top of the fabric – as it happens with screen prints or heat transfers -, direct-to-garment prints require a little more care than other print techniques. They should be washed inside-out and should not be tumble dried or heat ironed. This extra care however does come with an upside: the inks used with our DTG machines are 100% eco-friendly, water-based inks which are gentle on our environment and your skin.

AT A GLANCE

• Full Colour print spectrum
• Photo-realistic print detail
• Perfect for photo & artwork printing
• Intangible feel on white garments, soft / waxy feel on coloured garments
• Only works on cotton based garments (minimum 50% cotton)
• Requires a flat print surface (no pockets, seams, bulgy fabric etc)
• Maximum print area: 35cm x 40cm (large tees); 25x30cm for singlets and small tees / ladies tees
• Requires extra care / delicate print (refer to our print care instructions)
• Not recommended for every day work wear / gym wear
• CMYK print spectrum
• Spot colours may not be achieved
• Compromised colour brilliance on white garments
• See Dye Sublimation Printing for printing full colour designs on non-cotton fabric, for printing a full colour range of pantone colours and for achieving the highest colour brilliance digitally.
• A high resolution raster file (.png, .jpeg)is sufficient for good print results
• No minimum order quantity
• No setup fees