DTG or Direct to Garment Printing
Direct to garment printing or DTG as it is sometimes known, is ever so slowly emerging as a viable alternative to screen printing, perhaps for short runs only at present, and given the current prices of the machinery involved this is not the easiest way to make a living. But the results are very interesting. Teething problems, high maintanance, breakdowns, speed and the lack of it, can be overlooked when presented with a highly detailed soft hand print on black shirts in a waterbased ink, and yes, you can have just one. It seems like very few UK sites are offering even 1 offs printed in DTG anymore. Advertees have stopped offering the DTG service for the foreseable future. For the information on sites which do offer this service see ultimate top list of T shirt fulfilment sites from the Buy Tees web site.
DTG is something that our company looked into before we bought our screen printing machine. We use water based inks to get the soft hand feel as well. Our designs go up to 5 colors right now, so this pushes the envelope with screen printing. As we grow, we will definitely move more towards DTG, especially when the costs go down.
It will be very interesting to see how the direct to garment printing market develops, we have been telling people they can’t have this and that design on a T shirt for so long now, T shirt printing is about to go through a very big change. We will always love screening though. There are so many things beyond the DTG printers capabilities.
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