If you are a custom t-shirt Printer who using using DTG equipment as one of your printing methods, you may run into DTG mistakes you would rather avoid.
DTG Printing is without a doubt one of the easiest ways to produce high-quality, ultra-custom apparel quickly. This isn’t a transfer system, meaning this machine actually prints directly onto your shirt (hence the name Direct-to-Garment).
But just like any piece of equipment or machinery, DTG mistakes can be made. That’s even in spite of the professional self-paced training and tech support team to back you up.
In the end, the thing our pros end up trouble-shooting most often… Is a simple user error.
To save you some time and a potential headache, we are going to go through the four most common DTG mistakes that you can make when DTG printing and how to avoid them.
#1 | Pretreatment Issues
For those of you reading, who are new to DTG printing and aren’t sure what pretreatment is, note that it’s a critical part of how the DTG printing process works.
Pretreatment is what makes the ink stick to the shirt. It’s sprayed on top of the fabric you are printing on before you print.
There are several different ways that people pretreat their shirts before printing:
- Wagner hand sprayer (made for painting)
- Generic Household Spray bottles
- Homemade plastic container boxes
Any expert DTG printer will tell you – “DO NOT DO THESE”. It’s very attractive to save money upfront by using the least expensive way to deliver pretreat to a garment, but you’ll often pay for it in errors.
These methods just don’t work well and constantly lead to DTG printing mistakes. Here is the problem:
- Inconsistency – Each shirt is being pretreated differently (few people can control the sprayers to apply an even coat, especially after the 10th, 20th or 50th shirt!
- Uneven Spread – Areas of the shirt will have too much pretreat and others will have not enough
- No control – No control on the amount or volume of pretreatment being sprayed
To solve this problem, we use the PTM – Perfect Pretreatment Machine.
Solution #1 | PTM Perfect Pretreatment Machine
This machine has a few features that ensure that you get the perfect pretreatment for your garment every time.
The PTM has a knob that controls the amount of pretreatment you want on your shirt. Sometimes the fabric type can affect the amount of pretreatment needed. This volume control knob makes sure that each of your shirts is getting a consistent amount of pretreatment. This way, you won’t be left with a shirt order that looks and washes differently.
It also gives you control over the nozzle length of movement. Meaning you can alter how far down you want pretreatment on your shirt.
For example, if you are DTG printing on a hoodie, you only need the chest panel pretreated. With the PTM, you can adjust your settings not to waste pretreatment liquid on the pockets.
#2 | Poor Artwork
Our second most common problem in DTG printing is poor artwork. This can be printing low-resolution files, designs having a solid background, saturation issues, etc.
But before scaring you off, if you purchase a DTG printer, like the DTG G4 from ColDesi, you are going to be thoroughly trained on your printer and what kind of artwork and files you need to use. However, if you are thinking of starting any customization business, you should have some essential art or graphics knowledge, and if you don’t – It’s never too late to start learning.
Generally, we see DTG mistakes when people try to just save photos from anywhere online and print them. Not only is this most likely a copyright issue, but it’s also not going to lead you to very successful prints.
When DTG printing, you should always use the most high-resolution PNG or PSD file type possible.