Increasing D2G Production

Posted by Alexandra Perry - Webmaster on 9/20/2016

D2 production is an abbreviation for direct-to-garment production. Some pros of D2 production are photo quality images, easy to operate, and an essential way to make profit. The negative aspect of D2 production is that it is not known for being able to produce a high-volume of printed t-shirts.

  The average production rate for D2 is around twenty to twenty-five printed white shirts an hour, but now we are seeing an increase in production with a few simple tricks. This newfound information is allowing some printers to produce eighty or more printed white shirts in an hour.

  In order to increase production a few adjustments to the decorating process and dual CMYK printing process must happen. Before making adjustments it is important to know that while this will increase production time it will limit you to white and light colored garments only and it will decrease the print quality somewhat due to the high volume.

  The dual CMYK removes the white ink from the printer in order to add another set of CMYK inks. In order to make the changes necessary to increase production you must first and foremost check that your printer and RIP program will support the CMYK setup; then you must flush all of the white ink from your printing system. A step that you can cut out in order to save more time would be to skip the pretreatment of the garment which will lessen the quality of the picture but if it you wish to increase production then it is well worth it.

                    

Direct To Garment Printing Can Be Easy And Affordable

  Adding a second heat press or a conveyor dryer will speed up the drying process of each print because you can lay two shirts side-by-side allowing for a fast print time. Another way to decrease printing time would be to use a printer that has a removable platen system because you can load a shirt onto the second platen while another one is being printed.

  As I said before, the short cuts are simply to improve production time. It would be deemed quantity over quality but if you wish to have maximum print quality then pretreating the garments beforehand would be your best option. By taking the time to pretreat your garments you would be gaining two minutes per print and if you chose not to pretreat it would be one minute per garment. It seems like a small difference but if you want to increase production time a few minutes can mean everything. These shortcuts tend to work best if you are printing a lot of white garments because it maximizes the potential of your D2 printer.

  For many D2 printers sixty to eighty shirts an hour is not the average rate of production but if needed a D2 printer can be maximized for this purpose. As technology advances we may not have to sacrifice quality or quantity or vice versa.

For more information feel free to contact the Texsource sales staff at 888-344-4657.