A direct to garment or dtg printer is an inkjet printer used to directly print an image on fabric, just the way a desktop inkjet printer is used for printing on paper. These printers are used in a range of garment printing applications, the most popular of which is t-shirt printing. T-shirts are very popular casual everyday summer garments and printed t-shirts are widely used because of the attractive graphics or catchy lines printed on them. Several methods are used to achieve this, including silk screen printing, heat press vinyls and dtg printing. In the past decade, direct to garment printers have gained significant popularity due to the benefits they offer over other garment printing methods.
The primary benefits of using a dtg garment printer over conventional textile printing methods is the convenience they offer. They eliminate the need for complex multi-screen silk screening machines which take up a lot of space and need a lot of configuration for each print. There is no need for the cumbersome preparation of multiple screens for a single image, virtually no limitation on colors, no color separation required to achieve the full-color effect and no cleaning of supplies required after printing. Apart from that, there are no expenses in the form of supplies other than ink such as silk screens, squeegees, emulsions, vinyl sheets and transparencies. The inks used in dtg printers are also more environmentally friendly and non-toxic, being water based rather than those used in silk screening which are based on synthetic compounds and are environmentally hazardous and often toxic.
A lot of online as well as offline suppliers offer dtg printers for sale but these machines do cost a lot and it is a good idea to visit a trade show to get a good bargain. Typically, the price of these printers varies from $10,000 up to $200,000 depending on factors such as the manufacturer and the printing width. The printers capable of printing on darker materials typically cost more, since unlike printing on paper, printing on garment requires special inks which require a light colored base. Thus, printing on darker colors requires printing a white base first and due to the chemistry of currently available white ink for these printers, it requires special hardware for the purpose. Used machines can be found at thousands of dollars cheaper than new ones, and one should always look out for those. However, one should never buy a used dtg printer that is out of order no matter how cheap it is, since repairs can be very costly.
For someone who has had experience with printers at the hardware level, it is also possible to build a diy dtg printer using a large scale inkjet printer as the base hardware, although it requires purchasing a lot of specialized equipment like the printing head in order to make this conversion work.
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