We are very excited to let you know about the newest innovation with Promo Hounds designed to give you less expensive costs and higher quality when printing on lower quantities of t-shirts!
Promo Hounds recently made a substantial investment in a Direct to Garment (DTG) printing system to save you money on lower quantity t-shirt orders. As an extra benefit this system can also print very high quality detailed multi-color images. We can also print other textiles with it but those would be evaluated individually.
What is Direct to Garment printing? DTG uses an ink jet printer, very similar to what you have in your office or at home...but much larger, to print on fabrics. It uses water-based inks. They are cost-effective for shorter runs, generally up to 50 quantity, primarily because there are no set-up charges. DTG printers print directly from digital files.
This is the one Promo Hounds is using. It is an Epson F2100 DTG printer. After much research we found it to be the best quality:
There is a little more to it than just the printer though. You still have to cure, or dry, the ink to the garment after printing it. After the garment is printed it is placed on a heat press. For that we use a heat press, set at 350 degrees, similar to this one:
There is one other step primarily for dark garments. Any time you print on a dark garment, whether screen printing or digital printing, you must lay down a layer of white ink. This keeps the dark background of the garment from distorting the colors in your imprint. When DTG printers first were introduced they did not have this capability. The white inks, as they are opaque, are a little tougher to work with. But that has been resolved now.
So, as part of the process of laying down the white ink before printing a dark garment we run it through a pretreatment using a machine like pictured below. It then has to go through the heat press, then the printer, and back to the heat press a final time.
The three pieces of equipment, along with the ink and pretreatment solution, are in the $20,000 price range, if you are thinking of doing it yourself.
How does DTG printing compare to traditional screen printing? Here's the pros and cons of DTG:
Pros:
- You can print very detailed photographs and designs directly to the fabric
- Excellent for individual projects or one-off t-shirts for an event
- Ideal for smaller batches of t-shirts
- Very little in the way of investment up front - no set-up charges
Cons:
- It’s not particularly cost-effective in large quantities
- There is a minimal design placement
And here are the pros and cons of screen printing:
Pros:
- Screen printing is cost-effective when it comes to bigger batches
- It’s ideal for simpler designs
- They’re cheaper when batch made
- Great for bold graphic designs
Cons:
- For multiple colors, these aren’t the best in terms of cost
- Simple designs only
- One design for every batch of t-shirts
- Bigger investment up front
If you would like to see how DTG printing looks just let us know and we'll be glad to provide a sample. kevin@promohounds.com
You can also see pricing examples here: T-Shirt Hounds