About our t shirt printing services

T shirt printing methods:

DTG ( Direct to garment )

DTG printing is a relatively new method for short run print jobs where screen printing would not be cost effective due to the high set up costs of screens. The garment is printed on directly by the printer, allowing for full colour prints without the need for numerous screens. The quality of DTG is comparable to a screen print, although full colour and photographic images will actually look better as they don’t have the grainy appearance screen printed images tend to have.
DTG printing is suitable for runs up to 150-200 t shirts, above this we would look to screen print the shirts if there wasn’t too many screens involved. As the DTG is a digital print the unit cost doesn’t reduce with volume as each t shirt costs exactly the same to produce.
Whites and coloured garments can be printed by the DTG printer; the only difference is that any garments printed onto coloured shirts would first be printed with a white undercoat to allow the colours of the print to look bright and vivid. The colour coat is applied straight to white garments without the need for an underbase. Prints onto coloured garments take twice as long as printing onto white aas the garment has to go through the printer twice. The underbase is also more expensive than the actual print hence different pricing for white and coloured shirts.

Vinyl Transfer

Vinyl transfer is used where text and simple logo’s are used. This is cut on a plotter out of different coloured vinyl sheets. Vinyl transfers are extremely hard wearing, in fact the vinyl would outlast the t shirt its printed on. Vinyl also comes in various effects including glitter, metallic, neon, and patterned vinyl such as camouflage and snakeskin. We tend to use a lot of vinyl for our stag and hen customers and promo shirts as people like the effect the vinyl creates.

Transfer Media

The final method we use is a transfer paper; this is purely sheets of carrier paper printed with the design. This is then pressed onto the shirts under a heat press and the transfer is effectively sealed to the garment. This is a really quick way to print shirts as it takes approximately 1 minute per shirt to produce rather than the three to four minutes on the DTG. The print quality is comparable to DTG but the life of the print is a little less. This method is suitable for white shirts, it can be used on coloured garments but a border would then be seen.
This method is ideal for large run white promo shirts with full colour print where a screen print would still be expensive.

Garments

Listed below are our most commonly used garments; although others can be sourced these are what we use on a day to day basis.

Stedman ST2000 Classic man

155 gsm
100% ringspun cotton, single jersey tubular fabric
twin needle stitching on collar and hem
taped shoulder to shoulder
Sizes S-XXXL
S (36”) , M (38”) , L (40”) , XL (42”) , XXL (44”) XXXL (46”)

Stedman Classic Woman ST2600 Bodyfit ladies T shirts

155 gsm
100% ringspun cotton ,single jersey tubular fabric
Short sleeve t shirt
Single needle stitching around collar
Twin needle stitching on sleeves and hem
Side seams
Sizes S-XL
S (32”-34”), M (34”-37”), L (37”-40”), XL (40”-43”)

Absolute Apparel AA11 Polo Shirt

190gsm
50% cotton 50% polyester mix
relaxed sleeves
Double stitched hem and sleeves
Sizes S-4XL
S (36”-38”), M (40”- 42”), L (42”-44”), XL (44”-46”), XXL (48”-50”), XXXL (50”-52”) XXXXL (52”-54”)