Direct To Garment - DTG
Summary
Direct To Garment, also known as DTG is the process of printing liquid garment ink directly onto the fabric or garment. These inks are typically designed for printing onto cotton and some machines don’t have white ink so are only suitable for printing directly onto white/light garments with a high cotton content. Once the ink is printed, it is cured using heat either directly applied using a heat press or the printed garment is placed in a drying unit.
For darker garments, a pretreatment solution needs to be applied/sprayed onto the area to be printed which is a water based salty glue mix. This helps the white underbase ink adhere to the garment for great durability. Larger more expensive DTG machines are loaded with a thick, gloopy white ink made from titanium dioxide which is laid down first as a white underbase on dark garments so when the colour inks are printed on top they appear bright and vibrant. Without a white underbase, DTG garment inks printed onto dark substrates simply wouldn’t be visible.
This is a great method for decorating garments and the printed graphic has a durable stretchy rubbery feel which lasts as long as the garment, typically one to two years. While good t-shirt design ought to have negative space (areas which aren’t printed and the garment colour shows through to form part of the design) it is possible to print larger areas using DTG without any major deterioration of the print over time.
Get in touch with us if you need some DTG printing done.
Issues
Most of the issues with DTG printing fall to the printer owner/operator rather than the end user. The white ink machines are notorious for clogging and needing very regular agitation to stop them settling and blocking the ink lines. Maintenance cycles are required regularly and rigorously and due to the amount of maintenance required, these machines need to be printing shirts all day long to justify the time required for maintenance and ink wasted from maintenance cycles.
If a pretreat solution hasn’t been applied properly, meaning the correct amount in a consistent coverage for the area to be printed, then there could be some issues with the print flaking/cracking after some washing. Always ensure you are ordering from a reputable provider.
DTG Requirements
- Machine - Specially designed DTG printer
- Transfer Media - None required as printed straight onto the garment
- Print Size - Machine specific, some can print A5/A$ size and other upto 400x600mm or more Process (for dark garments) - Pretreat applied, cured, white underbase printed, colour ink on top then cured
- Process (for light garments) - Sometimes pretreat is used but other times the colour ink is printed straight onto the garment and cured afterwards - No white ink is used.
- Substrate Type - Fabric with high cotton count, 100% is best for the waterbed inks but cotton/poly blends down to60/40 split can also be DTG printed
- Equipment - Pretreat sprayer/machine, DTG printer, Heat press to suit the size & shape of the design on the substrate and optional dryer unit.
- Substrate Colours - White/light garments for machine with no white ink, any colour for machines with white ink capability.
- Ink Colours - Full-Colour CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Key/Black) plus White ink for machines that have it.
- Cost of Media - Medium. Ink can be expensive depending on the machine and how much the machine is used.
- Suitable Artwork - Perfect for full colour, blacks & whites for machines that have it. Reasonable detail levels are possible and this process is suitable for large print areas too.
Get in touch with us if you need some DTG printing done.
Let customers speak for us
Custom Cut HTV Iron On Transfer To Press Yourself At Home, Personalised Cad Cut Plotter Cutter Vinyl & Iron-on Heat Transfer Vinyl
very high quality, design advice and speed excellent
The only white-on-transparent service for our small craft purposes ! Great quality! Fast (for small orders)! Full tracking. Rational prices ! I'm so happy ! Both - waterslides and stickers are great !
The White backing custom decals come out really nicely. They are a soul provider of a decals I use in my model business. As a hobbyist these decals. They have vibrant colours and detail isn't lost from converted from Adobe Illustrator to PDF.
If could ever find a way to have the protect film just over the decals these could definitely complete against major brands
Use this company regularly for waterslide decals for projects we work on. Find the staff always willing to help, particularly if need some technical advice. Great find for what we need to do!
all good
Proper impressed with the Lead Pig sticker. Really good quality, colours are spot on and it doesn’t feel like cheap flimsy rubbish. Came out exactly how I wanted it. Would happily order again.
Ordered Sample sheet, ideal to know how fine writing can be. Just designing my own decals and be sending a order in the near future :)
This was my first order and the waterslide decals are excellent quality. Will definitely use your service again.
Great results, exactly what I wanted and great communication throughout!
Top quality digital printing. Speedy turn-around. Very helpful over a couple of problems I had.
I have now had a chance to use some of my items and the quality of the film substrate is far superior to the commercial waterslide transfers I have used on model kits. It is tough and easy to handle.
Terrific quality. I was concerned about definition but the smallest detail was faithfully reproduced. Have used IJ printed decals before for my scale models and was disappointed, but as these metallics were impossible for inkjet I tried third party production and they are definitely well worth it.
I make guitars. I wanted a custom decal for the headstock of a new bass. I designed the image and sent the jpeg to Phoxy and almost by return of post the decal arrived. It fits perfectly and was very easy to apply. A couple of coats of clear lacquer sealed it well. Perfect. Thanks so much for you help
Designed a lot of Space Marine shoulder pad iconography for my custom chapter. Sent the sheet to phoxy they came out superbly. Really easy to apply as they slipped off the sheet really quickly. They took Microsset and Microsol well and smoothed over the curved and rounded contours of shoulder pads superbly. Genuine joy to apply. Will be using again, cheers.