As I conduct various seminars on direct-to-garment printing, I have become aware of two prominent features and improvements in today's direct-to-garment technology which have gone unnoticed by many garment decorators. Many decorators are unaware of the substantial improvement in the process of printing a dark garment and the surprisingly cost competitive aspect of direct-to-garment printing.

The earliest direct-to-garment printers were capable of full colour printing, but were limited to white or light garments. While this met a large portion of many garment decorators' needs, the inability to print on dark garments limited both application and widespread adoption of the technology. The advent of dark shirt printing capability has been the important technological breakthrough which has allowed direct-to-garment printing to become a total solution, leading to widespread market acceptance of this exciting product.

In the early DTG printers with white ink technology, producing a dark garment with white ink was a difficult and technically challenging project. The link between the graphics software and the printer was weak or non-existent. RIPs for managing output were complex and often very limiting to the decorator. Today's improved software provides a more user-friendly experience with greatly improved design flexibility and quality of output.

There were also significant issues with printer reliability and quality of images produced with some of the earliest DTG printers utilising a white ink process. These issues were mainly due to the incompatibility of the white ink with the print heads used in the direct-to-garment printer. Recent improvements in ink and process technology have all but eliminated these early issues, provided the operator utilises some simple maintenance procedures:

• Agitate white inks daily. Gently removing the ink cartridges or bottles and rotating the contents every day will prevent settling of the inks and ensure uniform application of the printed white ink.
• Print something every day. If no production is scheduled, print a nozzle check or a small test print every day to keep the ink moving within the printer and prevent drying of the ink which could eventually clog the print heads.
• Run a nozzle check every five to 10 shirts during production. Pre-emptive checks and cleaning will reduce waste and ensure higher profits for the decorator and high quality products for your customers.

By following these procedures and suggestions on a regular basis, direct-to-garment printers can now easily produce beautiful, high resolution, full colour prints on dark garments.

Many garment decorators still believe that direct-to-garment printing is fine for one or two garments, but for larger volumes, screen printing is more economical. The second paradigm shift in the world of direct-to-garment decorating is the surprising cost advantage of relatively large volume DTG production with traditional screen printing and transfer technologies.

A recent cost comparison analysis of a full-colour graphic on a light coloured garment illustrates this quite clearly. In this comparison, the same full colour graphic was chosen for both 4-colour screen printing and direct-to-garment printing. As would be expected, the cost of producing one or two garments was highly in favour of the direct to garment process. What was surprising to many decorators was the breakeven quantity, where the cost of both technologies was equal - 66 garments!

The cost advantage of direct-to-garment increases dramatically as the complexity and range of colours in the graphics increases. In the comparison, the screen print process required the creation, set-up and cleaning of 4 colour screens. These are fixed costs which must be recovered, whether the quantity is one or one thousand garments. In the comparison, these fixed costs caused the production cost of one screen printed garment to be in excess of £50, while the cost of one garment printed DTG was less than £3. Clearly, direct-to-garment printing is an economically viable production option for relatively large orders.

When you consider the recent advances in dark garment direct-to-garment printing, combined with the superior resolution and nearly infinite colour capability of the digital process, I am sure you'll agree that it has truly hit its stride.

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