Original Blog Post: DTF Printing for Your Designs: What Are the Advantages? - The Spreadshop Blog
Whatever your product, design or niche, Spreadshop has the right printing method to get the most out of your creations. Most designs are printed with the infamous allrounder, direct digital printing. But for accessories made from more rigid materials, including caps, bags or products with particularly fine fibers such as polyester shirts, we need to find a better match. This is when it‘s DTF (Direct-to-Film) printing’s time to shine.
DTF Printing Transfers: The Ins and Outs
Digital printing involves spraying your designs, just like an inkjet printer, directly onto the products. With DTF printing, however, your motif is firstly pressed onto a foil (or film). This allows for very exact ink quantities, meaning vibrant colors, opaque whites as well as remarkably sharp and fine edges. DTF film absorbs almost every drop of color, so even high levels of detail and color gradients are no problem.
Once the film has been printed, it gets a layer of adhesive, before being pressed onto the product, which sits in a pressing device. This makes DTF printing ideally suited for both light and dark products. It’s ultimately just as durable and stretchable as the product fabric. Here’s a quick summary of the main advantages:
- Available for all file formats
- Extremely stretchable and durable
- Suitable for dark and light textiles
- Compatible with cotton, polyester, blended fabrics and many other materials
Which products do we use DTF for?
Thanks to the moderate pressing temperatures, DTF printing is suitable for numerous different fabrics, whether coarse, fine or mixed.
The rougher materials include baseball caps, hats, bags and backpacks. But it also works well on T-shirts and hoodies, and on finer materials, in particular polyester fibers. DTF prints are perfect for sport and function shirts, as they protect more sensitive fibers.
What do I need to look out for as a spread shop owner?
Basically, nothing. All our usual printing recommendations and requirements also apply to DTF printing, including:
- Transparent Backgrounds
- Best possible resolutions
- No half-transparent prints.
- Minimum line thickness of 1mm, as otherwise they can break away from coarser materials
You don’t even need to worry about which products you need to print with DTF. It’s part of our job as print-on-demand experts to find the printing style that fits your designs and ideas. That’s we set up the printing process to match each individual order. The goal is simple: to get the best possible printing results. Good thing we know a thing or two about this.
By the way, some of the most recent products activated for your shop are only possible due to the introduction of DTF printing. These include the children’s apron and the umbrella. More products will follow. Stay tuned!
Now you want to find out more about DTF? Let us know in the comments. Otherwise keep your eyes peeled for further reports on what we do.