Understanding the Custom Shirt Printing Process
When it comes to having custom printing with your choice of t shirt design Singapore and elsewhere, you should ensure the printer you choose knows what they are doing. Low-quality printing might be okay for a one-off gag gift but for anything else, from marketing purposes to uniforms, or gifts or personal clothing, you want the shirts and the printing to be of at least good quality or better. Consider whether you want to feel the ink and see it crack or whether you want it deep in the fabric and smooth. Will you need more than two or three colors and how detailed are the image, text and logo? Are you printing onto dark shirts or light? There are a few things to know the answer to so you can make the right choice in the type of printing you choose.
Direct to Garment aka DTG
This is a printing method used on materials where the image is printed straight onto the garment for custom shirt printing. It uses something that is similar to an inkjet printer used for paper printing but modified for garments. With screen printing, the image is applied through multiple screens to achieve the final design. With DTG the ink is applied straight onto the garment in the position you choose. There are a number of advantages to this printing technique, you can use lots of color, and it can print detailed images or photos a lot more effectively. That flexibility does cost more though.
Screen printing
Screen printing is a very popular method despite being the oldest technique that has existed for thousands of years. Once called silkscreen printing because the screen used was made from silk, now it is made from nylon to create a very finely woven fabric on a wooden or aluminum frame. Commonly used in t shirt design Singapore basically a process is used that then creates a negative image on the screen and ink is used and a squeegee pushes it through. Each screen takes one color so the more colors the design uses the more screens it takes and the longer the setup. The advantages are it is cheap and you can order in bulk from a lot of places saving even more money. It lasts a long time but it works best with simple images.
Heat transfer
When choosing heat transfer for custom shirt printing you have the process you might recognise from the home methods using carrier paper and an iron. But with a printer, you get more professional results and a hotter press tends to be used. The image and text are placed onto the paper and then that is placed over the garment. Heat, as well as pressure, is applied and this causes the ink to transfer to the shirt. The quality of the print and its durability is not always the best especially compared to DTG printing.
Summary
With this information you can make a more informed decision in what method of printing on garments is best for you.
