DTG Shirt Quality

[54warrior]

Hello,

I have another shop make t-shirts for me on occasion. They recently purchased a RICOH DTG machine. My question is about the quality of this print, on a black garment. Is this is what should be expected from a DTG machine? I was pretty disappointed with the result and they said that this is what you get when printing on a black/dark garment.

Thoughts?

 

[gixxer2004]

Looks like it wasn't pretreated properly or at all. I don't have a DTG but was looking into buying one. All of the information I read was that the dark shirts need to be pretreated in order for the white ink to properly adhere to the shirt. If you don't pretreat the shirts then the ink will be really light. The shirt examples that I saw looked a lot better than that, I would definitely be asking for a refund.

 

[Superior_Adam]

There are a number of factors that go into print quality on DTG. What type of shirt was it? 100% cotton or a 50/50 blend? The pre treat is a factor as well. On the right garment and proper printing that is no where near the quality it should be. We print on a lot of black shirts without any problems. It could be that they are new to this and are not sure what the best way of handling different garments yet.

 

[54warrior]

Thanks. Yeah it is on a 100% cotton tee. And yes, they are new at it.

 

[Reveal1]

We have a DTG (a horror story in itself); I doubt the pretreat is causing that particular problem although gixxer2004 is right that incorrect pretreat can cause issues with print quality Looks to me that the printer is not getting Cyan or Magenta ink but is getting white and black, which are marginal but probably acceptable if all the colors would have printed. Not enough pretreat usually causes all colors to soak into fabric causing a faded or unclear print. Probably a blocked printhead. I've had similar issues but would NEVER deliver that to a customer. The fact they would probably means you should run away from them as a vendor as fast as you can.

 

[Superior_Adam]

Thanks. Yeah it is on a 100% cotton tee. And yes, they are new at it.

a cheaper 100% cotton tee wont print as good as 100% ringspun cotton but they are not getting something right. I would tell them your not accepting that shirt and tell them to run another one or find a new vendor. Here is a shirt we printed on black to show that you can still get good colors on black garments.

 

[willkho]

Used dtg printer for more than 8 years.
A healthy DTG printer can print really well. However, to keep the printer healthy is a huge challenge.

As Reveal1 said, most probably nozzle block on certain channel.
White is very bad too, it could be not enough pretreament or partial nozzle blocked.

 

[Ere]

This is on a 100% polyester shirt. It looked amazing in person. I just bought a DTG printer but I haven’t received it yet. There is a learning curve and different brands can print on different materials. Not all of them can only print well on cotton. I hope you asked them to try again.

Hello,

I have another shop make t-shirts for me on occasion. They recently purchased a RICOH DTG machine. My question is about the quality of this print, on a black garment. Is this is what should be expected from a DTG machine? I was pretty disappointed with the result and they said that this is what you get when printing on a black/dark garment.

Thoughts?

 

[signage]

This is on a 100% polyester shirt. It looked amazing in person. I just bought a DTG printer but I haven’t received it yet. View attachment 140473

Which printer did you purchase?

 

[Ere]

Which printer did you purchase?

Omniprint. 2yr warranty, life time tech help, white recirculates and it has a wet capping station so it can be left up to a month not printing. I am a service tech for large format so the tech help just threw me completely towards this brand. We are just starting out with shirts so having it be able to sit for a couple weeks that we might not be printing or on vacation is awesome. Omniprint 330tx Plus. I think I got that right. I will post the difficulties in starting to use this printer.

 

[d fleming]

Fanatics is a local business to me. They print for nfl, mlb etc.90% of their machines are digital. They print great on any color garment. They are also hundreds of thousands of duckies per machine. One of my best friends works there and all he does all day is maintenance on these machines to keep them running. OPerators have no clue on how to maintain, just run as fast as possible. Far cry from hand painting signs in high school!