What Makes UV-LED Printing Unique

In the past, UV-LED printers were great to print on hard substrates without needing a pre-coated surface, but what if your customer needed apparel? Sublimation works perfectly for performance polyester material garments, but will not work directly on cotton garments. Direct-to-garment printers (or DTG) have worked well with cotton garments, but not so well on the performance polyester garments.

Direct Color Systems is has come up with a solution. Using Multisolve IRF4 UV inks and compatible F4 Edition printers, users are able to print on not only hard substrates, but also cotton and polyester fabrics. Blair Allen, president of Direct Color Systems, states, “The DTG market has long struggled with printing to polyester and synthetic blend garments with and without pretreatments. The ability to print to light-colored cotton, polyester and various synthetic blends, without the need for pretreatment, combined with the ability for the printed image to stretch with any fabric, can radically increase product offerings and profits for those in the DTG market.”

If you are a small business owner looking to add a new piece of equipment, the UV-LED technology may be appealing to you. With one additional piece of equipment, you can produce hard substrates with full digital color, as well as cotton and performance poly fabric garments. You will be able to cover a wide variety of products that pretty much any customer that walks through your door needs or wants. It is hard to watch a customer walk out your door after they have asked for a product you could not produce for them.