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Printing tshirts using Direct To Garment (DTG) printing, the process of printing to cotton based fabrics (i.e. tshirts) using a large format inkjet printer, is far superior to screen printing, the process of pressing inks into fabric through a stencil. It is more environmentally friendly, less time consuming and more cost effective for smaller runs.
DTG tshirt printing is more environmentally than screen printing. DTG uses water-based inks to printing directly onto clothing, this means that there are no excess inks used in the actual printing and the only waste that does occur is from the occasional print head cleaning – it should also be noted that head cleaning does not involve any external materials only ink. Of course, major head cleaning can be avoided by regular maintenance of the printer, and thus one head clean a day – a matter of millilitres – is usually sufficient. Then as long as waste ink is disposed of correctly, printing tshirts using the DTG method should have almost no environmental impact. Screen printing however has excess inks from parts of the stencil not printed to the tshirt and when screens are cleaned these excess inks are then washed down the drain.
The process of screen printing involves creating a stencil and then pressing inks through said stencil onto fabric. The stencil can be created by hand or photo emulsion, and for each colour of a design a new screen is needed. DTG uses only software and a computer to send a design directly to a printer and this can take a matter of seconds with all colours being printed at once. (On darker fabrics there is a white layer printed first and then the remaining colours). DTG is far less time consuming with regard to setup, and this is particularly useful when printing small runs of tshirts.
Smaller (less than 50) runs of tshirts are far more cost effective with DTG printing than screen printing. Minimal setup with DTG printing means that tshirt runs as low as 1 can be produced for a matter of $5 – $10 in materials (including tshirt) and for a print on white can take as little as 2minutes to produce. Screen printers may claim that on larger runs they can produce a much more economical print however with multiple colours, and then drying time this seems unlikely.
Printing tshirts using Direct To Garment printing is far superior to screen printing. Whilst both methods produce an excellent quality, DTG is far more environmentally friendly, is less time consuming, and more cost effective for smaller runs. Whilst screen printing is a tried and tested method of printing onto tshirts it seems that DTG printing is the way of the future.
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