DIRECT TO GARMENT

Jobs which have many colors or photo realistic images, and which have a small number of garments are most likely to be printed DTG.

DTG printing is slower than screen printing, normally much much slower.

DTG print speed is governed largely by the size of the print, intensity of the color, and whether white ink is required as it is for dark shirts. DTG print speeds can be around 10 per hour to 20 per hour, where as screen printing will range in the hundreds of prints per hour.

Head over to our contact page which includes email and phone numbers for all of our sales staff.

Our standard turnaround time is two weeks from the receipt of your order.

Rush orders are available. Please call us today to see if your order can be fit into our production schedule. Rush charges may apply during peak business seasons.

We accept cash, check, and charge (Visa, MasterCard, and American Express).

Orders can be picked up at any of our four locations in Blacksburg, Charlottesville, Lynchburg and Roanoke. Orders can also be shipped UPS, standard charges will apply. Some companies promise free shipping, but then build it into your cost elsewhere with an additional markup. We prefer to keep our pricing straightforward and honest, so that you can make the appropriate decisions.

Orders that have not been produced can be cancelled. However, depending on when the order is cancelled, art charges, digitizing fees, or garment restocking fees will be charged to cover the costs already incurred.

We pride ourselves in exceeding the industry standard and providing exceptional customer satisfaction. However, due to the labor intensity of custom orders we cannot accept returns on decorated garments under any circumstances.

Because of the labor intensive setup of screen printing, it is not normally possible to print samples. Blank samples for sizing purposed can be ordered. Please contact us for information and charges.

We have a full service art department which can fine tune artwork you’ve done, or produce artwork from your concept or idea. Artwork for DTG is generally speaking more simple to produce than screen printing art due to the lack of need to have color separations. Essentially any good quality file that would print on your desktop printer, will print on the DTG printer. Addition of text and formatting to a size desired on the garment are often all that needs to be done to a photo or provided image. Our artists are all experts on producing artwork which will produce great shirts, we charge artwork at $30.00 per hour.

Our artists use primarily Apple computers running Adobe Illustrator. Unlike screen printing which normally requires vector artwork, DTG artwork can be a high quality EPS file. We prefer to be provided illustrator files, or eps. If questions remain our art department will be glad to discuss acceptable file types.

For the protection of all parties involved, all artwork must be proofed by you prior to any order being produced. You will have the opportunity to view a representation of your job electronically via email or a web based art approval site. Please be aware that colors do vary on different monitors and inks on colored shirts have some interaction which will change the color or change the way a color is perceived.

DTG printing will give a wide variety of full color printing, however exact color matching is not possible even on white shirts. Ink variation on colored shirts in even more problematic due to interaction with the colored inks and the white ink under-printed, and the colored ink and the colored shirts.

Since there are no screens and much less setup time than for screen printing, minimum quantities are much lower for DTG printing. Of course as with all printing, the larger the quantity the lower the per unit cost to print. Ask your salesperson for specifics.

Printing on dark garments is much more labor intensive and has higher material costs than printing on light garments, thereby costing more. Printing on dark shirts requires pretreating, also printing on dark garments will always require white ink which is problematic for DTG printers. The white ink will be printed where the image is to be white, but also underneath where all colors will be printed. This white ink makes the colored inks bright and vibrant, but drives up ink cost and slows down print speed.

Also, darker colored garments cost more to purchase that lighter colored ones, white are generally the cheapest blanks to purchase.

Yes, definitely! DTG printing should really only be done on 100% cotton shirts. Also, since a very flat surface is required, hoodies with pouches and t-shirt with pockets are problematic for this reason.

We prefer to purchase the garments for your job and we do this for the overwhelming majority of jobs we produce. We work with dozens of suppliers and can get an almost unlimited range of garment styles and colors. If High Peak orders the garments, we can be sure they are garments which work well in the screen printing process. This reduces the likelihood of garment dye interaction with ink, garments with treatments that adversely affects inks, and garments which can’t stand the heat required to cure the ink without shrinking or scorching. Also, if we provide the garments we can replace any garments lost during production.

If you provide the garments to be printed, there are some potential issues of which you need to be aware. Recently there's been an explosion in the market of moisture wicking and other high tech performance garments. Many are problematic when printing, due to ink adhesion and scorching issues caused by the temperatures required to cure ink. Additionally if there are misprints, etc., since we didn't provide the garments we can't replace those which get damaged. It's safer for all parties and we prefer whenever possible to provide garments we know will work for the intended purposes.

Please notify your sales person if an exact quantity is necessary. Losses during production are always a possibility, please make your salesperson aware if an exact quantity is essential.

There is no simple answer to this, most of the time it’s not a problem, sometimes it’s a major problem. Below are some common considerations, but before assuming it is or is not ok to group styles, sizes, or colors please consult one of our sales staff or artists and they can give you a definitive answer.

Grouping different styles: Some items such as short sleeve and long sleeve may be grouped with no problems. However for example, full front prints on t-shirts probably won’t fit on the front of a pocket tee, or a hoodie with a pouch. Mixing garments with different composition is likely not possible using DTG.

Grouping different colors: Again, to determine if this is possible your salesperson or artist will need to understand the specific job. One color text can be printed on some shirts in one color of ink, and then the ink changed for printing on other colored shirts, an ink change fee will apply. However if there are multiple colors of ink, it gets much more complicated. Also, some artwork will get a “negative” look if the ink colors are changed from dark to light. Think of a baseball printed using white ink having dark stitches. If you used the same artwork and just changed the white ink to black ink for light shirts, you’d have a black baseball with light stitches which will look strange. In this case, to get the baseball to look right there would be different artwork for the dark and light shirts.

Grouping different sizes: This is part of the normal routine, but still there are considerations. If the job includes sizes adult M through XL the artist will design the artwork as large as will fit on the Medium and this is normally fine for all the shirt sizes. However if you have a job with youth small through XXXXL the artwork which will fit on the youth small will look tiny on the XXXXL. Having adult sized and youth sized artwork is one solution, this is less of a problem with DTG as opposed to traditional screen printing.