The DTGColumn


The ultimate guide to DTG pre-treatment


In this month’s DTG Column, Charlotte Darling, director of Amaya Sales UK, has provided an ultimate guide to DTG pre-treatment so you can achieve perfect prints time after time.


D


irect to garment printing or DTG as it is more commonly known is, in my opinion, the go-to future of garment decoration. The ability to achieve high-resolution full colour artwork onto any garment. No weeding involved, no film/ carrier material to dispose of. No set-up costs so no minimum orders like with screen print, and an attractively low cost per print. It is the only truly sustainable garment printing method for the previously mentioned reasons, and it allows you to print what you sell, not sell what you print.


But no DTG printed garment can achieve the high standards I have set out above without a great substrate to lay the ink down onto, and when I say substrate, I am not just talking about the quality of the fabric. In many cases the substrate needs to be pre-treated.


Pre-treatment – What, why and how?


Pre-treatment is an aquatic polymeric emulsion that fills in the spaces between the weave of the fabric and when cured (dried) provides a smooth surface ideal for the water-based inks to adhere to, resulting in high-quality print. It creates a surface on the garment that will absorb the water-based ink and allow it to bond with the fabric giving great vibrant designs and durability. If pre-treatment is not used the ink may not properly adhere to the fabric. This can result in poor colour vibrancy, bleeding or smudging and even worse bad washability.


By choosing to pre-treat your garments, you can ensure that the ink adheres effectively to the fabric, resulting in vibrant, accurate, and durable prints that accurately reproduce the original design


| 54 | May 2023


away with no white ink base, and no pre-treatment, which makes your print cost and production time significantly less. The example I show costs only £0.26 in ink and is 40x30cm in size.


How do I efficiently pre-treat my garments?


Pre-treating on a cotton-based garment is not always required


and most importantly, meet your customers’ expectations.


What types of pre-treatments are there?


There are several types of DTG pre-treatment available on the market and they are usually defined to work with light fabrics, dark fabrics, and polyester. My best advice is to use a pre-treatment that is recommended and compatible with your inks. It is highly likely that the inks and pre-treatment solution have been developed in conjunction with each other and will achieve the best results. This is not an area to save a few pennies. One myth worth uncovering at this stage is pre-treatment on a cotton-based garment is not always required, see the image example above. If the colour of the ink/ design you are laying down is darker than the colour of the shirt then you can get


Manual application of pre-treatment to the garment can be achieved by using a paint-spray gun device or brush to apply the solution. It takes a bit of technique to gauge the right amount of liquid needed but thousands of people are using this solution successfully worldwide. Secondly, there are the RTP (ready to print) garments you can source. You will achieve consistent print results with these shirts, but they are more expensive than your standard T shirt and the range of colours and sizes limited. Great if you want to avoid the pre-treatment process and are selling online with a limited product range. The third solution is to invest in a pre-treatment machine that will automatically spray the solution on the area of the garment that you tell it to. The machines on the market usually have a number of nozzles that spray the solution onto your garment. I would recommend you look for a machine with four nozzles, and that will allow you to spray onto different parts of the garment – for example left crest would only use one nozzle whereas full front design would require all four nozzles switch on.


Furthermore, to achieve efficiency in your pre-treatment production, you want a machine that will allow you to save settings for different fabric and garments. This can be done in conjunction with the printer’s manufacturer’s recommendation of how much solution is needed for different fabric types and thicknesses.


www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk


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