Comparing T-Shirt Printing Methods for 2022 | Direct to Garment Printing, HTV and White Toner T-Shirt Transfers

One of the questions we often hear is:

What is the best method to make or print custom t-shirts?

It seems like every year, new features and new technologies are hitting the market. So how can you know you have the right equipment for the jobs your plan to create?

That you have the best t-shirt printer or best custom t-shirt transfer maker for what you want to do? We’ll do a DTG comparison to other methods such as white toner printers, screen printing, transfers, and more.

Deciding what to base your new t-shirt business on contributes to not just whether or not you’ll be profitable, but also how fast you’ll grow, how much money you can make and if you’ll be HAPPY doing it.

The Right Questions

You’ll want to start by asking yourself some questions first.

  • How much space do I have? Will you be renting new space or trying to use space in an existing business, your spare bedroom, or your garage?
  • What kind of space do I have? Some technologies require ventilation, zoning, clean up areas, and some do not.
  • Can I afford ______? There is a WIDE price range of equipment. What can you afford? Can you qualify for a lease or finance?
  • If you have a niche in mind, does it fit? In other words, if you’re unique market is dance and cheer, you MIGHT want something with bling options. If it’s sports teams only, you need something that will print on sportswear, i.e., polyester and moisture-wicking garments.
  • Messy or Clean? While every printing method makes a little mess, there are significant differences between them.

T-Shirt “Printing” Methods

The custom t-shirt business in 2022 has more options than ever for creating designs. While there IS actual printing, it’s not the whole story.

Here are some of the most popular ways that people create custom apparel, t-shirts in particular:

  • Heat Transfer Vinyl (Cut Vinyl)
  • Screen Printing (Silk Screening)
  • Direct to Garment Printing (Also known as “D2”)
  • T-Shirt Transfer Printing (White Toner Printers)

Let’s take a look at each technology, its pros, and cons.

Heat Transfer Vinyl (HTV)

This could be the least expensive initial investment for producing custom apparel yourself. An entry level cutter for business is about $1300 (stay away from the $200 or $300 craft cutters).

A good example of of a popular cutter is the Roland GS24, which will allow you to cut vinyl up to 15” wide, a perfect size for shirts.

The process works like this:

  1. Create your design – it comes with software, but you can use an graphics application.
  2. Cut the vinyl – the cutter uses a blade to cut the shape you designed out of a sheet or roll of colored vinyl. The color of the vinyl is the color of the design.
  3. Weed the vinyl – You have to use “pick tools” to peel away the leftover vinyl and just leave your design.
  4. Place the design on a shirt and heat press to cure.

You can already see the disadvantages. Time – it takes a long time to cut the vinyl and depending on the size or the complexity of the design, it takes a long time to weed the vinyl. Colors – You CAN do more than one color, but it requires you to layer solid colors to get there and that just adds time to the process. The process is more labor intense than DTG in comparison.

The advantages are that you can apply the vinyl to all kinds of products; polyester jerseys, gym bags, totes, and you can do signage as well. It’s also very cheap to get into as we already pointed out.

Screen Printing (Silk Screening)

Screen printing is probably the most widely used custom t shirt method. It’s certainly the one that produces the most shirts.

The Screen part of screen printing is a kind of mesh that you print a negative image on. Here, you can learn more about the history of screen printing.

The process works like this:

  1. You create a screen for each color you want to use
  2. Pour ink onto each screen by color
  3. Use a squeegee to pull the ink through the screen and onto a garment
  4. Repeat for each color
  5. Use a dryer to cure

The reason that screen printing is so popular is that you can get started for a small investment if you’re willing to use a manual press and a few colors. It produces great quality and long lasting prints and once the screens are made it costs very little in ink to print the shirts.

The disadvantages are the reason that many screen printing businesses also have a short run option like direct to garment printing or T shirt transfer printing.

Screen printing can be a very profitable business, but you have to have the space, be prepared for the mess and to turn away business from people that want to print less than 50 or so garments or that want full color or photo quality images.

Direct to Garment Printing (DTG)

picture of the g 4 t-shirt maker machine

Direct to garment or “DTG” printing is an inkjet technology the prints directly onto a garment, or canvas, or almost any textile substrate.

In the early years of direct to garment, there were serious issues with printing on dark garments using white ink, and the printers required a lot of maintenance. Current models are another story entirely and work well with white ink.

Advantages to DTG:

The advantages to direct to garment include the ability to print very high quality, full color, photographic prints. The process works like this:

  1. Pretreat shirt ( if it’s a dark shirt you must “treat” it with a kind of spray primer, light colors you do not have to do this step)
  2. Load the shirt – up to 4 shirts actually with some DTG Printers.
  3. Open your graphic in the provided RIP software and Print.
  4. The shirt must be heat pressed to cure for between 1 and 3 minutes.

In addition to the great quality, you can print 1 shirt to 50 shirts very profitably and they have the softest feel of any of the technologies listed here.

How fast can a DTG Print?
image showing how fast can a dtg print?

One of the newest machines of note is the G4 DTG T-shirt printer. The G4 machine by DTG has the industries first vacuum platen which gives your prints a clean crisp look while also having the practical benefit of securing the shirt.

DTG Printers are Inkjet printers that squirt the ink directly onto the t-shirt. But not all of that ink ends up in the garment.

Some is sprayed into the air, or bounces off the shirt, and ends up on the print heads, the encoder strip – it just makes the inside of the printers a mess.

The Vacuum Platen prevents that by maintaining the vacuum the entire time it prints.

Instead of the ink spraying into the air it’s pulled down into the t-shirt where it belongs.

There are DISADVANTAGES to direct to garment printing as well, of course.

There are a lot of companies using DTG to run their custom t-shirt business because you can print one or two shirts profitably and can make those designs full color and great looking for a very low cost per print.

T-Shirt Transfer Printing (White Toner Printers)

This is what we think is the sweet spot of custom t-shirt printing, provided you get the right equipment and supplies to it.

T-shirt transfers are basically sheets of transfer material that you lay on top of a garment and are heat pressed on to make a permanent graphics application. They CAN be produced with a screen printing set up, but that has all the same restrictions and downsides of actually doing screen printing, so we’re focusing on a t-shirt transfer system from DigitalHeatFx and ColDesi, Inc.

The Digital HeatFX process works like this:

  1. Print your graphic to the DigitalHeat FX pro8432 that’s part of your package. You can print from any graphics application like CorelDraw, etc. directly on to what looks like transparency, that’s the DigitalHeatFX Laser EZ Peel paper. This works just like a laser printer and can print at up to 30 pages per minute.
  2. Put the printed sheet on top of a second sheet called the “B” paper and heat press them together. This adds a white layer that makes the graphics POP on dark materials. This finished full-color t-shirt transfer is complete.
  3. Heat press onto an item to permanently apply.
image of the white toner printer model 8432wt
Advantages to T-Shirt Transfer Printers:

If you’ll notice, we didn’t say apply to a t-shirt or garment? That’s because you can take that full-color digital image and apply it to almost anything! Including:

Just about anything that you can fit in a heat press can be decorated with the Digital Heat FX System. And there are many other advantages as well:

More Advantages:

No Weeding

If you already have a vinyl system you know what it’s like to sit in front of 50 vinyl sheets and “weed” your graphics out before you can start heat pressing. There is NONE of that with this method.

Full Color Every Time

Not just full color, but beautiful, digital color printed right from your computer. Unlike screen printing where more colors mean more costs and longer times and more like DTG where you see it and print it.

Print on Anything

We mentioned this, but it’s worth elaborating on. That customer you sell a dozen custom t-shirts to.. do they want bags, hats, koozies with the same image? You can offer a better service and make MORE MONEY.

Almost NO Maintenance

It’s a fundamentally a laser printer, so all you need to do is clean a few spots when you empty the waste cartridge – something you’ll need to do every 3-6 months depending on usage, and your ready to print again. When you’re cleaning you’re not wasting expensive ink, using a hose like in screen printing or even replacing a blade in a cutter, and you’re not wasting TIME. More time printing means a more PROFITABLE business.

No Mess

Even heat transfer vinyl will leave little bits of colored material stuck everywhere. Screen printing is naturally messy and DTG uses inks that must be replaced and shirts need to be pretreated with a sprayer. The only thing you’re left with after creating a DigitalHeatFX transfer is a sheet of the “B” paper. EASY!

Home Use

What are the space and environmental requirements for your t shirt transfer white toner printer?

  1. A Table (desktop is okay)
  2. Room for a heat press

Once again, it’s based on a PRINTER, so think about a printer in every office environment and it’s basically the same. Set it up in an office, a shop, a storefront or your dining room table.

Cost

While it’s not the cheapest method on our list, it’s almost ½ the cost of most DTG Printers and about the same or less than a standard commercial screen printing set up.

Commercial White Toner Printer:

Newly released is the https://digitalheatfx.com/digitalheat-fx-pro8432/ is the first transfer printer to offer a 5 channel system delivering CMYK (just like most toner printers) plus a white channel.

This means you get extremely rich colors, better than any other transfer printing solution in existence. This 5 channel system is powered by a 5 LED Electrophotographic printer that outputs an amazing 1200×1200 dpi. This combination of technology gives you the most powerful transfer printer on the market today.

Disadvantages to T-Shirt Transfer Printers:

The biggest disadvantage – one NOT shared by Digital HeatFX systems – it that most t-shirt transfer printers can only create designs for light colored shirts.

Conclusion

There is not PERFECT method for creating custom t shirts or way to start a custom t shirt business, but one of these may be the perfect one for your business.

If you think that the Digital HeatFx T Shirt Transfer System might be that perfect one, or want to discuss more differences between these technologies, just Contact Us or Chat with us in the lower right corner of the screen.