DTG Printer FAQ

All of the DTG brand direct to garment printers do an amazing job with opacity and edges. Unlike your current printer, the Viper2 and M2 use our RipPro C6 software, and that does a great job with complex, variable density and “fade to black”. No worries – you’ll get great prints.

Using a software package like Deconetwork to run an online designer/ecommerce website for custom t-shirts is a great idea. The customer designs the shirt online, then it outputs a .png file for you to bring into your Rip software and print to your direct to garment printer.

Temperate is rarely and issue with any direct to garment printer, but humidity is very important. If you live in an arid climate, you may want to purchase an inexpensive hydrometer and humidifier.  Normally the case only for places like AZ, NM, NV, etc. 

Your heat press will normally be set to about 340F to do t-shirts. Since you’re only hovering over a canvas print, and that’s only to shorten the drying time, you can leave it there.

Yes, as long as it’s not glazed or finished in any way.

The M2 will last for YEARS if you take care of it properly. There’s actually still a market for our much older models that are still producing custom tees every day.

All of our DTG printers use CYMK inks. That’s Cyan, Yellow, Magenta and Black as well as White ink.

No. But you can produce all your graphics on your Mac and use an inexpensive PC as a kind of “print server” if you’d like.

Yes, there is a direct USB connection from your PC to the DTG printer. All of the drivers and software come with the equipment.

Yes, you CAN print on hats. It just requires a special hat platen. Most decorated caps though, are done with an embroidery machine like the Avance 1501C, which is what we recommend. 

That’s like asking how much paint you’ll need to paint your house! The answer is that it depends on many factors; how big is the image, how much ink does it use, etc. The Canvas we printed during our live online demonstration today used just $.25 worth of ink.

Yes! You can definitely say that on camera. The DTG brand has the best image quality on the market.

A printed T-shirt takes about 3 min. in the heat press. A canvas takes 10 to 20 minutes depending on where you are.

Yes. You’re going to use white ink to print on dark garments, and that pretreat process prepares the material to accept the ink. You’ll end up with a much better looking, and longer lasting print with pretreat.

Sure! The printer reproduces YOUR artwork, so just create a distressed graphic. Alternatively, you could experiment with printing on pre-distressed garments.

Here is a link to a YouTube playlist that will take you through the entire process.

If you are using a sprayer to pretreat your shirts it’s best to do it in a different room than you print and cure. If you’re using a pretreatment machine, then the same room is fine. Here’s a link to our favorite pretreat machine, the SpiderMini.

Yes. The white pretreatment is specifically for printing on natural fibers like the canvas and a cotton T-shirt.

Post treatment is available here.

We’ve done several good comparisons depending on the DTG model. In general that answer is always print quality, interface time because we can do up to 4 shirts at once it’s much more profitable, training and support; there’s no other company that offers the amount of training and options that we do.  Of course, our people are the BEST!

This is more of a technical question. One of our technicians can send you the settings if you already have our current RIP software and a DTG brand printer.

We recommend curing 100% cotton shirts  There’s such a variety of other materials, weights and blends out there that if you want to try something different it will just take a little testing on your par.

You do NOT have to repeat printing to get a more vibrant image. Just pretreat it properly and print – one time, every time.

You really MUST have a specific image in mind to answer that question. You can visit our ROI page here to see a sample, with all the costs involved.

Brother inks should actually be LESS expensive because they manufacture their own ink. No idea why it’s not!

We don’t typically print on caps internally. Frankly, the VAST majority of our customers print on t shirts, with a few exceptions printing on wood, canvas, pillow cases, etc.

There is a very simple maintenance schedule that is printed right on every machine. AND it’s covered thoroughly in our training videos on YouTube.

The M2 is 50″ L x 38.6″ W x 21.7″ H, 212lbs.

Yes, as long as it’s unfinished wood. It looks GREAT.

If stored properly, up to 3 weeks