EducationTips

Once a shirt has been pretreated, how soon do I need to use it?

It’s always best to pretreat as close to the actual printing as possible. While the shirt sits around, it will start to retain moisture, and moisture in a garment can create poor DTG results.

If you don’t plan to use the pretreated garment right away, make sure you do the following:

  1. Place the garments in a plastic bag to keep any extra lint or contaminants from getting on the print area.
  2. Before you print on the garment, heat press it for 10-15 seconds to remove any moisture and wrinkles. Pressing before you print will also flatten down any fibers that may be standing up again. Fibrillation or fibers sticking up can cause small dots in your print when cured, or even a fuzzy-looking area on the print.
  3. After you press the garment, make sure you do not see steam coming off the shirt. If you do a quick press before you print and you see steam, press the garment again for another 10-15 seconds. Lots of steam means lots of moisture.

—OmniPrint International

Allee Bruce

Alexandria Bruce

Alexandria Bruce is the former managing editor of GRAPHICS PRO magazine.

View all articles by Alexandria Bruce  

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