We often hear about the comparison of DTG printing to screen printing and how DTG just doesn’t look as vibrant or last as long as screen printed shirts. While there is some merit to their claims we have to remember that screen printed plastisol inks are made from “plastic” (PVC resins and pigments basically). By that inherent nature plastisol screen prints can be very durable.
DTG inks however are a water based pigmented ink that consists of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black to make up the entire color spectrum. Screen printing inks can target a specific ink color via actual pigments and are able to achieve colors that are very difficult to achieve via CMYK printing ( that super-hot pink or neon green color).
How Can We Make DTG More Like Screen Printing?
When DTG inks are printed on a standard shirt, the results though initially looking good, can leave a bit to be desired. The reds just don’t pop or they tone down after heat pressing. The blacks appear more grey-ish and colors just don’t seem to jump off the shirt at the customer. Visually if you are not comparing the shirt in a side-by-side comparison it will usually look pretty good. However, if you use Dupont DTG inks there is a way to take your printing to the next level.
RTP Apparel Will Make A World of Difference
We wanted to show the difference between a non-pretreated shirt and an RTP Apparel DTG engineered shirt utilizing the Dupont Artistri ink set. Both shirts were printed with the same printer and the same exact rip settings (1440×1440) and the same cure times. Even though you can see a difference in the picture, the actual visual product is a night and day difference in the look of the finished print.
The RTP Apparel printed shirt has several noticeable differences over the standard high quality untreated 100% cotton shirt. First, the image was incredibly sharper and much crisper than the untreated shirt. The black and yellow edgings (where the inks meet each other) were sharp and crisp with no bleeding into each other.
Another difference was the color vibrancy. The black inks were not a deep shade of grey but an intense “black”. Reds were significantly better, the blues bluer and overall color quality was greatly enhanced. The results looked impressive to the naked eye and elevated the print quality to something any DTG print shop would be proud to give to a customer.
What This Means To Your DTG Print Shop
By using the Ready To Print RTP Apparel shirts you will be removing the messy and time consuming process of pretreating. It means you can focus more on printing and selling than prepping shirts and pretreating. With the ready to print RTP Apparel shirts you can achieve a a close proximity to a screen printed shirt with better wash durability while potentially improving your printing speeds.
On untreated standard high quality shirts many people will either run at a higher resolution or double print the design to try to achieve a higher saturation of ink. This is all done to try to make the shirt design look better and richer. Often times this attempt falls short and costs more due to additional ink used and longer print times. These results do not come close to what a pretreated or Ready To Print shirt will produce. With the RTP Apparel white shirts you can run at a lower resolution (often 600 or 720 dpi) and achieve a better looking print than one printed at the same or or higher resolution. Printing at lower resolutions can increase your productivity per hour (number of shirts produced) over shirts printed at a higher resolution (which will take longer to print). It all depends on what you are happy producing in your shop.
We always recommend to do a test print on a regular shirt and then compare those same print setting to an RTP Apparel shirt. We know that the results you see will often change the way you think about DTG printing.
Give RTP Apparel A Try
RTP Apparel is currently selling a Sample Pak that is only $15 and includes free shipping. This Sample Pak consists of two white shirts and two black shirts that require absolutely no pretreating and are ready to print. Simply pull them out of the bag, heat press to remove any moisture and then print like normal. It is really that easy. We know you’ll be amazed at the results you see.
You can purchase RTP Apparel by visit our online store at www.rtpapparel.com/shop.