T-Shirt Printing Techniques

Screen Printing 

This is the most common method that T-Shirt printers use found on the high street. This is because the production cost for high volumes of screen printed T-shirts is very low. 

Designs are printed on to the t-shirt with plasticol inks and sealed by a process called heat tunnel curing. Each colour needs to be printed on to the t-shirt individually meaning it can cost around £25 to set up each screen.
Consequently set up costs are high and full colour printing is nearly impossible. Therefore a large number of t-shirts is the best option for using the screen printing method. 

Transfer Printing 

The cheap, high quality and professionally produced transfers are generally printed on a laser printer and applied to a t-shirt using a high quality heat press. The quality produced would not normally be up to the standards expected by retail customers who are used to the finish and feel of screen printing but is commonly used for Hen Nights, Stag Do's and promotional events etc.

Vinyl Transfers 

Vinyl transfers produce possibly the most durable custom t-shirts of all the 4 main printing procecesses. Vinyl transfers are often used for the production of custom work wear. A digitally controlled cutter is used to cut a design from a vinyl sheet and the vinyl is then removed from its backing sheet and applied to the garment using a heat press. 

Vinyl is produced in a wide range of colours and is is great for simple solid colour designs. Placement is done by hand so is not really well suited to fiddly designs with multiple colours etc. 

Direct to Garment (DTG)

Direct to garment printing is the most recent printing method. T-shirts are loaded on to a plate in a similar manner to screen printing. Textile inks are printed on to the t-shirt using an inkject printer. 

When printing onto white t-shirts this method is consistent, fairly rapid and inexpensive as the designs have no physical set up costs like screen printing does. However dark t-shirts cause more problems as they need a white underbase for the design to be printed on to. This can result in the t-shirt not washing as well because the design can become rigid and ruined.