What Is DTG Printing and How Does It Work?

Direct to Garment Printing in particular, is a fantastic technology that allows almost anyone to print incredibly colorful, high-impact images directly onto t-shirts (short sleeve, long sleeve 3/4 sleeve), tote bags and other textiles. DTG printing, also known as Direct-to-Garment printing, is a relatively new printing technology that first appeared in the 1990s. While it didn’t affect the apparel and promotional product business right away, it became a favorite in the textile industry many years later. Simply put, a DTG printer resembles a color inkjet printer, but it prints on fabrics instead of paper. The print heads on the printer spray the desired colors right onto the surface of your garments, giving your clothes a unique and vibrant design. And after it finishes, the design won’t have a different feel from the rest of the garment, like other printing methods. If you have a logo that has many different colors in it then this is a great technology to use for your next t-shirt order. Because of its advanced technology, DTG printing can let you print many colors at once; you won’t have to print each color separately like you would when screen printing. The more complex the design the better it will look with DTG printing. It is great for photographs or design with a lot of shadows, gradients, special effects and more. DTG Print works best on 100% cotton T-shirts, cotton blends and on lighter colors but we can print on darker colors as well with the white under print ink that our machines has. The reason for this is that not all fabrics can absorb the inks the same way and the color of the garment can affect the dyes in the fabric to interact with the ink, therefore changing color slightly. This can happen with any type of printing, even screen-print and even on paper.

Here is an example of the steps of printing a t-shirt or garment with DTG.

The first step you'll have to do is choose the logo or design you want to print. We would analyze and prepare the design to be used for DTG Printing in a professional high end graphic art program. Please remember it is very important to provide high resolution artwork for any type of imprinting whether it is DTG Printing, Screen-printing, Embroidery, Embossing, Laser Etching or Heat Transfer. This ensures the design will look clean, smooth and clear after it is printed. Before we print the garment, we pre-treat it to ensure long-lasting colors and high-quality printing. After the pretreatment step, we dry the garment. Then we line up the garment carefully to the location we want the print to appear on and then set up the machine to print the desired logo or design.

Once the printing process has completed, we then dry the ink that is on the garment, by either a commercial printing drying or heat press. This step allows the ink to cure and it is essential to let the ink set into the fabric. This is how it is guaranteed that the design doesn't crack or fade after a single wash. We want it to be high quality printing!

DTG printing has many pros that make it shine among other printing methods. For instance, you can print many colors at once, saving a lot of time and effort. Not to mention, you have an unlimited color range to print.

DTG printing gives you the best print quality on the market, better than screen printing and heat transfer. This is because it embeds inks into fabrics instead of transferring the colored image on top of the material.

Accordingly, you can use it to print detailed designs without worrying that the details won't show because of low-quality colors. The setup time is slightly less than screen-printing but there is still some pre-setup involved before you can start printing a job. In the end Direct-to-Garment printing is a high-quality method that results in vivid colors and cool designs.

Direct-to-garment (DTG) printing is a fresh, up to the minute technique, that is gaining popularity among printers – especially among independent small-scale business owners – due to the numerous, high-quality options presented for developing excellent, personalized apparel garments. DTG printing which dates back to the late 1990s employs a specialty inkjet printer to add water-based pigment inks precisely on the garment. The moisture is then absorbed by the threads of the fabric. So basically, it can be thought of as a process similar to printing a document at home but instead of paper make it fabric. The results seem to be incredibly phenomenal projects for which the consumers are going nuts.

Animated, Majorly intricate designs

In comparison to conventional printing techniques, DTG printers can produce vibrant, picturesque results by releasing microscopic particles of ink, leading to greater clarity. These printers often use the entire colour spectrum and can print several colours at once, making them ideal for dynamic patterns or designs with shading and gradients.

DTG allows us to print any design onto a T-Shirt in full-colour and exactly how they look on your camera or camera phone. This means that we can print all of the detail that's included in your perfect picture and then immortalise it onto a T-Shirt to show off to everyone.

At the end of the day DTG Printing is great for advertising your business with its classy smooth to the touch look and feel. Your personal or business logo will look amazing on any apparel or promotional product uou choose to buy for advertising or uniforms for your employess. There are hundress of items to choose from that can be DTG Printed, items like t-shirts, mouse pads, tank tops, sweatshirts, mugs and more. Sports Teams love Direct to Garment Printing because it is not heavy on the team jerseys or uniforms and the print lasts a long time with the continual washing for team uniforms or gear.