DTG (direct-to-garment) printing is exactly what it sounds like: an industrial inkjet printer applies water-based inks directly onto the fabric surface. Understanding the process helps you understand why certain things cost more, take longer, or produce different results.

Step 1. Pretreatment: For dark garments, a chemical pretreatment solution is applied to the printing area and heat-pressed dry. This creates a surface the ink can bond to and enables the white underbase. Without pretreatment, ink on dark fabric looks washed out or disappears after washing. Light garments skip this step.

Step 2. Loading: The garment is loaded onto a flat platen (a board that fits inside the shirt). The print area is carefully positioned and tensioned. Any wrinkles cause print distortion.

Step 3. Printing: The printer head moves across the garment depositing ink layer by layer. On dark garments: white underbase first, then color ink on top. The print head moves at speeds that make it look fast, but a complex full-front design on a dark shirt can take 8–12 minutes per piece.

Step 4. Curing: Immediately after printing, the garment goes through a heat tunnel (conveyor dryer) or under a heat press to cure the ink into the fabric. Undercured ink washes out; overcured ink cracks. Temperature and time are calibrated precisely.

Step 5. Quality check: Every finished piece is inspected. Color saturation, print alignment, clarity, and cure quality are checked. Pieces that don't meet spec are reprinted.