Frequently Asked Questions about Digital Garment Printing

FACT: Digital garment printing is the fastest growing segment of the apparel decorating industry.
FACT: Inkjet Garment Printing is changing the face and way we do business.
FACT: Digital garment printing can help you stay ahead of your competition and create awesome looking full color printed garments.

Isn't Digital Garment Printing SLOWER than Screen Printing?
It all depends on several factors. One is the production rates of the specific inkjet T-Shirt printer you are using. The faster the machine the more prints per hour you can produce, which increases your profitability. The Brother GT-541 prints on average a shirt in about 60 seconds. Smaller sized designs print faster, larger ones take a little longer. Even when you take into account loading the shirt, printing, unloading and curing the garment you can still easily get up to 45 shirts per hour from the Brother GT-541 inkjet garment printer.

Another factor to consider is that in screen printing you have to print film positives, prepare screens to be burnt, expose, washout screens, dry them, tape and block out the screens, setup, register, print, de-ink the screens, tear down the press and reclaim the screens using chemicals. With a digital garment printer you can be printing shirts as soon as the art is approved. This definitely gives the digital garment printer a speed advantage even though you might be able to screen print faster on a per-piece basis. On average it takes about 30 minutes per color in a screen printed design to get it burned, setup, registered and torn down. On a 6 color screen print this means you have at least 3 hours just in preparation not including printing time - if not longer. With a digital garment printer you could have already been printing for those 3 hours and making money.

The more colors in the screen printed design the higher the quantity where the digital printer would be faster to print with over screen printing. VIEW OUR SPREADSHEET COMPARING DIGITAL GARMENT PRINTING AND SCREEN PRINTING TIMES HERE.

What about ink costs - Isn't digital garment printing more expensive than traditional screen printing?
This is another question that depends on several factors. Again, it will depend on the speed of your digital garment printer and the size of the imprint. There is a great article on this at Inkjet Garment Printers.com that compares screen printing vs. digital garment printing. You can find the article here or use our CALCULATOR to help you see whether or not digital printing would be more profitable to use than screen printing. You will see that because of increased production times it is often more profitable to print digitally than it is to traditionally screen print the jobs.

What about washability of the shirts - how does the ink hold up?
The inks used in the Brother GT-541 are a water based pigmented ink developed by Brother to hold up well under normal washing and drying. It is similar to water based screen printing inks that they give a really soft hand feel and wash well. In our own washing and drying tests the prints have held up well and some shirts work better than others. You will get a little wear, similar to plastisol inks printed on 100% cotton that get a little fibrillation on the printed image, but it is still very acceptable. Always test your prints first to make sure your equipment is set properly to cure the inks.

How much money can I make with a Brother GT-541 Digital Garment Printer?
This is another question that relates to how busy you are with the machine. However, we have put together an article on InkjetGarmentPrinters.com that will help you understand this question by using actual costs and production numbers. See the article here.