12/02/2010 by admin.

A new revolutionary DTG or Direct to Garment printer has just hit the market place, from Yes Ltd.  It is really special because it claims to be able to print the white ink at the same time as the Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. If this is true it will mean it will cut production time in half!

Up until now, if you were printing on dark or indeed black t-shirts, it was necessary to print a white layer first. This is partially for any white areas of the design, but  also so the lighter colours woulds show up. If you printed a light blue or yellow onto a black t-shirt, they would not show up. If you put a opaque layer of white onto the t-shirt first and then print the light colour onto that, you get a nice bright end result.

This meant the old process needed to do one pass under the printer head to receive the white layer, allow the white ink to dry, and then print again using the other colours. As you can imagine this takes rather a long time.

At this point in time it all sounds a bit implausible to me. At the end of the month there is the Printwear & Promotion Exhibition being held at the Birmingham NEC. Yes have got a stand and should be demonstrating the new process. I will go, observe and report back.

Posted in Yes Ltd, Printwear & Promotion, DTG printing, DTG | No Comments »

09/02/2010 by admin.

There is a lot of talk lately on internet forums about building you own Direct to Garment printers. The theory has promise but the reality will be a disaster.

Yes the basic principle is the same. Both spray either ink or dye at the the surface to be printed. In some cases, both machines use the same printer head, but that is were the similarity ends.

It is slightly more realistic if you want to print onto light or preferably white t-shirts. This is because there will be no need to put a white layer onto the garment first. If you do want to print images with lighter colours or white onto darker t-shirts then the real problems begin.

The white pigment used to print onto black or darker t-shirts is much thicker than the printer head was designed to cope with. Therefore there is a great tendency for clots and eventually permanently unblockable printers heads that will have to be replaced. The is not a cheap repair. The head alone without fitting charges will cost around about £200 to replace! This problem can re-occur very often, which will wipe out any profit on the work. On top of that the job will be delayed while you repair the printer which will probably make the job late and upset your customer.

Then there is the problem of ripping software, I am not going to bore you with the technicalities of it, but needless to say you will have to have it and it is not cheap. Add to that you will have no maintenance or technical backup and I would say you are onto a looser.

If you are thinking of printing t-shirts with DTG technology, get onto the t-shirt printing forums, read what the customers of the different companies are saying and choose the one with the happiest customers.

Posted in T-shirt, DTG printing, DTG | No Comments »

01/02/2010 by admin.

A more up market look is generated by the polo shirt. This can be warn by men or women and come in many shapes and sizes. the major types of polo shirt are cotton, mixed cotton and man made fiber, short sleeve and long sleeved.

Schools use polo shirts for school uniform, because the can take the rough treatment they will get from the kids and are not to expensive to replace. Plus the tend to look smarter because they have a collar.

The other positive attribute of the polo is that you can embroider it. T-shirts tend to be too thin and can chafe. With the polo’s longer life expectancy the permanence of embroidery is worth the extra cost.

Posted in polo shirt, Cotton | No Comments »