We’ve all bought T-shirts before and touched the synthetic material applied to the shirt, but have you ever wondered about the process of making these designs possible?
Well, to be honest, when I first started making my own shirts, deciding between the two took a considerable amount of thought and research.
Unlike natural materials such as wood, metal or stone, plastic is made from extracted fossil fuels 99% of the time. These fuels are refined into chemical building blocks and linked together into what we know as “polymers.” Bonding them together creates a plastic resin.
Plastic resin is used in both screen printing and DTF printing, but have you ever compared the two?
DTF, also known as direct-to-film printing, transfers a film onto a shirt. Heat is then applied while the film sits on top of the shirt. A temperature of 340°F solidifies the print onto the shirt. Screen printing, on the other hand, involves liquefying plastic and applying it directly to the shirt with a similar amount of heat.
While both processes seem similar, the quality of the print differs. In DTF, the detail is fully encapsulated. However, the shirt stretches with each wash, and extreme heat can sometimes cause the print to peel, which is why washing in cold water is recommended.
Screen printing, on the other hand, feels bolder and is extremely long-lasting. Fused into the threads of the fabric, the print usually outlasts the shirt itself.
These facts and conclusions favor screen printing, but I personally chose DTF because of the expenses involved. DTF films can be printed without changing the setup, while screen printing requires different physical stencils for every color or gradient in the artwork, along with aligning them.
For now, I believe that providing people with cheaper shirts in this economy is more favorable, but we still can’t forget about quality.
Source
For background on plastic manufacturing: British Plastics Federation — How Is Plastic Made?