DTF stands for “Direct To Film” printing and the technology is still fairly new in the garment printing world! DTF is the answer to being able to handle full color short run orders without all the costs and setup that screen printing full color designs has. DTF printing also has advantage over DTG (Direct to Garment) printing because DTF printers don’t cost as much to purchase or service, and all you need to own is a Heat Press and you can purchase the full color DTF transfer sheets without owning a DTG printer, or a DTF printer for that matter!
What can I print on with DTF transfers?
You can print on cotton, blends, polyester, light and dark garments + a whole lot more as long as the substrate can fit onto a heat press and withstand the heat.
Want a Print Method Comparison Guide? We got you!
Want to dive in further?
Okay let’s take a step back and discuss printing terms.
Screen Printing: A process of pushing ink through a mesh screen onto the fabric. Here, each color on the print needs it’s own screen made (a stencil that allows just that color to pass through) and those screens overlap on top of eachother one at a time. So a full color design requires you to make multiple screens and companies charge up to $20 – $30 per screen in some cases. Screen printing is great for LARGE quantity runs because once it’s all set up, the process is super fast (pressing shirts at 5-40 seconds depending on the colors needed) and eventually the quantity increasing lower the total cost per unit as the setup fees and screen costs get divided more and more between the amount of pieces you press. Now if you want just 5 full color shirts? This is NOT cost effective at all. Screen printing can be done with metallic inks, waterbased inks (soft hand feel, dyes fabric) or the ever so popular plastisol inks (you feel them, they eventually crack, we all have these shirts). Now, enters DTG printing….
DTG Printing: Direct To Garment printing is super cool! You pretreat you shirt with a special adhesive chemical, then load it into your printer which then prints DIRECTLY on your fabric. This is great for people printing a few at a time and avoiding the setup costs of screen printing in small runs. The drawback, unlike screen printing, is DTG printers can print upwards to about 20 shirts an hour which isn’t nearly as fast as screen printing. Also since there are no real setup fees, the cost to print 1 unit is basically the same as it is to print 20 shirts. Some DTG printers give bulk deals of course, but they are taking a cut from each unit to do so. These machines are large and expensive and fantastic if you just need to print a few shirts at a time and they use watebased inks, so very little to no cracking! So what is DTF then?
DTF Printing: Direct To Film! Very similar to DTG in terms of printing waterbased inks except a few extra perks. DTF prints the waterbased inks (with a white under base layer on the back side so the colors don’t fade on darker fabric colors) onto a clear film transparency paper, then an adhesive powder is added and melted to the back of it so it’s dry to the touch. This film is then placed on the fabric and the ink is pressed into it with a Heat Press and your shirt is done! The benefits? Anyone with a heat press (yes, I’m talking to you, Vinyl crafters) can purchase these films, store them in a folder and press them to order when needed, so no sitting on inventory / stock and NO MORE WEEDING, plus, full color! This is great for someone without the money or space for owning these large printers but still want to start a shirt business from their home. Now the drawbacks? Just like DTG, the cost per unit doesn’t really get cheaper as there are no real setup costs, but it’s GREAT for short run orders! Here we almost exclusively print garments with DTF technology and chose that so we can not only get into this new tech at entry level, but offer the printed transfer sheets to others who want to get creative and make shirts themselves!
