DTG vs Screen Print

[jvanick]

*Mods -- if this needs to be moved somewhere more appropriate, feel free to do so....

Brandt's discussion of the fulfillment side of orders of 12-100-1000 pc orders got me thinking.

when you have a design that you're doing fulfillment on that's say 12pcs and it goes to the 100-500 pc order size, you're likely going to want to move to screen print for the lower cost of production, etc.

how do you manage expectations of the customers, etc as the print between the dtg and the screen print are going to look different?

or do you just bite the bullet and run all those jobs dtg even if it's that many pcs just so they all look the same?

[Frog]

I have gone the more common opposite route, and used DTG for fill-ins after a screen print run, and was able to show the client the difference up close and personal to give them the ability to make the ultimate informed decision.
That's a little tougher with third party fulfillment, but not impossible.

[royster13]

Would not the answer depend on what the client was paying for?....In any event, samples of the different methods should be shown to client for final go ahead...

[ZooCity]

If you have enough heads on your presses I might consider indexing the art before it is ran DTG.  Should be easier to recreate that when the orders graduate to screen printing.  A very good RIP would be instrumental I'd imagine.

[3Deep]

Good question, if you don't have to run them all at one time I would keep doing them DTG, since those machines need to be run all the time anyway, now if you've got a run of 100 or more shirts and only one DTG then you might need to rethink the process your using if you need to turn them around fast.

[Racer Tees]

If you have enough heads on your presses I might consider indexing the art before it is ran DTG.  Should be easier to recreate that when the orders graduate to screen printing.  A very good RIP would be instrumental I'd imagine.

I wonder what a good RIP would do here.  I know that Wasatch was night and day above Versaworks on a Roland SP-300 vinyl printer.

[Sbrem]

If you have enough heads on your presses I might consider indexing the art before it is ran DTG.  Should be easier to recreate that when the orders graduate to screen printing.  A very good RIP would be instrumental I'd imagine.

I tend to think that you'd need a good 12 heads printing (or more) for the best index to recreate inkjet like quality, though I've seen great work done with 8, it was art built to work on 8, because more heads weren't available...

Steve

[ZooCity]

Agreed, you need a lot of heads for most indexed art. But design the art from the get go to work with say 10 colors screen printing and I bet the move from dtg to screen is much less noticeable.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[ABuffington]

Does anyone emulate a 55 or 65 line halftone when using DTG? 

Al

[jvanick]

how about NON sim-process type prints...

think just a standard 2 or 3 color vector style print... could you match those close enough where the average person wouldn't know or care...

99% of our 'small-run' junk is just very basic stuff, but when you add an underbase + 4 or 5 screens, it's just not worth doing it for less than $50-$60 a shirt.

[ZooCity]

Does anyone emulate a 55 or 65 line halftone when using DTG? 

Al

That would be super smart!  Way easier than doing it the other way around as I had suggested I imagine.

I think matching most spot color art would be pretty tough with DTG, screen just kills it there v. any other tech. 

[ScreenFoo]

I posted it a long time ago on TSF, in regards to trying to emulate DTG output, but I'm surprised more people don't try to nail down DD 4CP.

(not looking at you, Go West guys.  )

[244]

Does anyone emulate a 55 or 65 line halftone when using DTG? 

Al

yes we have one customer doing it. He did the same print digital and screen. Toll a couple minutes to determine which was which with the naked eye.

[Dottonedan]

I've done it before when I had my t jet and when I did testing for Disney when we were looking into a DTG for samples.  You separate the job out like it should be for any other sim process job, then convert each grayscale sep to 55-65lpi in bitmap (like you do when you don't have a RIP to get halftones and then convert that back to grayscale mode at 1:1 ratio. Then load that into a new CMYK file. Select all pixels of the channel sep then load/move the selection to the layers. create new layer, and fill it with the pms color using the correct pantone in the color picker. Then do the same for each color sep. Stack them/build it up with all the other colors. Set opacity of the underbase to a more of a gray tone like what you might see with printing thru a 230 mesh. Top colors a little brighter with the last being the brightest or 100%.  Then merge visible layers for one flat file with no background.

Megan Haines asked how to do that about 3-4 years ago for presentations to show the color art in halftones. Same thing except that you flatten the file once done, and print to a color printer.

I imagine you could make an action script to do that with any sep program and file.  The end result is "closer" to the traditional screen print yet not identical. Still more accurate than a color print on paper and due to using the same sep file its very close, but never an identical match.

Doing a stochastic print of sim process seps is even more accurate to a DTG print when comparing visually. Providing you use a very high rez for your bitmapping seps such as 233ppi (that can be used for a 305 mesh), DTG uses calculated sprays of what looks like (FM) frequency modulated (pseudo-random) sprays of dots. This looks very similar to stochastic printing (random squares like indexing but in sim process). DTG prints out in dots or sprays that are much smaller than what we print through screen so our resolution must be much lower if we are to match the appearance of a screen printed tee done later.

[ABuffington]

Ok thanks everyone for the feedback on DTG sim process simulation.
Does a DTG printer have color linearization capability similar to X-rites 1440 color patch test?
Can DTG printers use other RIP output?  If so I can see where using the color calibration software could allow
a DTG printer to print and read the test print and linearize color so a closer match is possible.
What are the color controls on DTG?  Is it the same as digital where you can dial in color dang near perfectly to what is on screen.