LibGuides: Direct to Garment Printing at the Hunterdon County Library: Home

Welcome to Direct to Garment Printing at the Hunterdon County Library

Welcome to Direct to Garment printing at the Hunterdon County Library. Our equipment allows Hunterdon County Library card holders to easily make personalized garment items at minimal cost. Patrons supply the cotton t-shirt.

Patrons pay for ink used to make the design on their t-shirt. Cash or check.

Ink charges for white t-shirts are $5.

Ink charges for non-white t-shirts are $8

There is a two hour limit per adult patron each month for equipment reservations for this popular machine. The machine is available on a first come, first serve basis during Makerspace Open Hours if no reservation is in place. The person using the printer must match the library card used for the reservation.

What is Direct to Garment Printing?

Direct to garment printing (DTG) takes your digital file, PNG for instance, and prints it directly on a item arranged on a platen in the machine. Because it is a digital process the resolution of the finished print is higher than with traditional screen printing methods. There is also no long setup process or cleanup like screen printing, which means making a personalized t-shirt with many vibrant colors is quick and easy!

The platen holds the t-shirt in a fixed position while an aqueous ink-jet solution is sprayed onto the garment. The ink is water based and works best on natural fibers (cotton, linen) For t-shirts where white ink will be used (darker shirts) a pretreatment step is required. We have a machine that does this as well and makes the pretreatment easy and very effective for getting sharp prints on darker shirts.

Polyester blend shirts required a pretreatment step using solution specifically made for polyester blends. For shirts that are 100% polyester we recommend using Sublimation Printing instead of DTG printing.