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Direct to garment printing onto T-Shirts is done by a specially designed and engineered ink jet printer using specially developed inks for this purpose. To initiate the printing process, the art image is sent directly from a computer to the printer via specialized software created soley for this purpose. The machines are designed so that the shirt is positioned lying flat under the printers' printhead. When the printer has received the art image data from the computer, the printhead moves back and forth effectively "painting" the image onto the t-shirt which slowly moves forward to allow the printhead to continue to "paint" the image onto the shirt. The inks used are CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), so the method is a true process print, commonly called "4 color process". The inks are water based pigmented inks, thus making them environmentally friendly. We print 100% cotton standard t-shirts front or back only via this method. Heavier fabric, such as 6.1 oz, gives a better printed result than does the lighter 5.5 oz or so shirt fabric. All the standard brand shirts we have encountered so far, such as Gildan, Hanes, Anvil, FOL, Port & Company, Champion, and so on have performed well. The Hanes Beefy-T or it's equivalent does give a bit better result. We cannot print neon or safety green color shirts via this method.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DTG ON WHITE SHIRTS VERSUS COLORED SHIRTS
Direct to Garment printing with white ink onto colored shirts is much more involved than Direct to Garment printing onto white shirts where no white ink is printed. For colored shirts, white ink must be printed to provide a base coat on top of which the colors and any white elements in the art are printed. This means that the inkjet printer must "paint" the white base coat first, then reposition the shirt to the same starting point as was used for the white coat so that it can now print the shirt again, this time "painting" the color image, plus any white elements, on top of the base white coat. Prior to printing the shirt, the area onto which the image will be printed must be coated with a special liquid spray. This spray must be dried by use of a heat press before the printing process described above begins. This dried spray coating serves two mandatory purposes. First, it prevents the white ink from being absorbed into the shirt, thus allowing the white ink to be very opaque and bright and the colors on top of the white to be bright also. Second, it makes a chemical bond with the white ink so that the image will be washfast.
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