In these economic times it is even more important to make prudent investments. Over the past 6 years the direct to garment industry has exploded and with it screen printers, embroiders, and entrepreneurs have asked is Direct to Garment worth the investment? And the answer is it depends. Like most investments it is not ideally suited for every investor. Most see it as a shiny new toy and are taken by its technology. This may be all well and good but that shinny new investment may be nothing more than 200lb paper weight if not utilized. Before we consider which model or manufacturer might be right for you lets first consider if you should even be looking at one.
Most Direct to Garment Printers are not designed to print large volume jobs. A print on a dark colored garment will take most Direct to Garment Printers 2-10 minutes to produce depending on printer speed and image size. This does not include pretreatment or heat pressing. You can probable count on doing between 6-15 dark colored garments per hour. This is not a lot when you consider a manual screen printer could do a similar job and produce between 30-60 per hour and an automatic printer could produce upwards of 300 shirts per hour. So if you are doing larger jobs on average then screen printing may be a better investment. Also, screen printing is better for special effects printing such as high density, glow in the dark, puff, special bases, glitters, and shimmers. With Direct to Garment you are dealing with usually five colors (white, black, cyan, magenta, and yellow). The white is used to underbase and the other colors are used to render a process image. This is the good and the bad. The image comes out just like the image on your home ink jet printer. However, you can’t hit some colors because they are beyond the color gamut of process printing. So make sure your clients are not incredibly picky about getting exact Pantone matches. If they are picky then you may not be able to satisfy them.