Screen, DTG, DTF & Pad — Apparel, Promo & Specialty

So far you have mostly thought about ink on paper. This chapter moves to a different world: putting a design onto a T-shirt, a hoodie, a coffee mug, a pen, or a tote bag. The print industry calls this decoration — adding a logo or artwork onto a physical product that already exists. Decoration is where most "custom merch" (merchandise) orders live, and it is a huge part of any print-shop SaaS.

Here is the single most important idea for this whole chapter: there is no one "best" method. The right method depends on four things — how many items, how many colors, what fabric or material, and where the design goes. A good print shop (and good software) picks the method that is cheapest and most durable for that exact combination. By the end of this chapter you will understand the five main methods well enough to make that call yourself.

The big picture: five ways to put art on stuff

Let's name the players before we go deep. Each gets a full section below.

Screen printing — the volume workhorse

Screen printing (also called silkscreen or serigraphy) is the oldest and most common way to decorate apparel in bulk. The idea is simple: ink is pushed through a fine mesh screen that has a stencil on it. A stencil is a mask that blocks ink everywhere except the shape of your design, so ink only reaches the shirt where you want it.

The "one screen per color" rule — memorize this

This is the fact that drives all of screen-printing economics. Each ink color needs its own separate screen, its own setup, and its own pass across the shirt. A design with 4 colors means 4 screens, 4 setups, and 4 layers of ink. More colors = more setup cost and more time.

The parts and the process

• Mesh: woven polyester fabric stretched tight on a frame. Mesh count = threads per inch. Low count (e.g. 110) = bigger holes = more ink = bold, thick deposit but less fine detail. High count (156, 200, 230, 305) = smaller holes = less ink = fine lines and dot patterns. Most T-shirt work lives at 110–160 mesh, with 110 as the default workhorse.
• Photo-emulsion stencil: the screen is coated with a light-sensitive liquid called emulsion. Artwork printed on clear film is laid on top and the screen is hit with UV light. UV hardens the emulsion everywhere except where the dark artwork blocks the light. Washing the screen rinses out the soft (un-hardened) emulsion, leaving open mesh exactly in the shape of the design.
• Squeegee: a rubber blade that drags ink across the screen and forces it through the open mesh onto the garment.
• Registration: lining up each color's screen to a shared reference so the colors stack perfectly. Bad registration = blurry, ghosted, misaligned prints.
• Off-contact: a tiny gap (about a nickel's thickness) between screen and shirt so the mesh "snaps back" cleanly after each stroke. Too much gap causes smearing and registration drift.

SCREEN PRINTING PRESS PATH (dark shirt, white + 2 colors)

  Station 1        Flash         Station 2      Station 3      Tunnel
  WHITE underbase   cure         color 1        color 2        dryer
  +----------+   +-------+    +----------+   +----------+   +--------+
  |\\\\\\\\\\| > | heat  | >  |  red     | > |  yellow  | > | FINAL  |
  | squeegee |   | gels  |    | squeegee |   | squeegee |   | CURE   |
  | thru mesh|   | white |    +----------+   +----------+   | ~320F  |
  +----------+   +-------+                                  +--------+
   prints the    sets it      lay colors on the bright      fuses all
   white "primer"enough to    white so they stay vivid      ink layers
   shape first   print on top

Underbase and flash cure (the dark-garment trick)

On a dark shirt, colored ink would sink in and look dull. So printers first lay down a white underbase — a layer of white ink shaped like the design that acts like primer, keeping the colors on top bright. Between layers, a heater called a flash cure gels that white just enough to print on top of it. Crucially, the underbase must be flashed (partly set), not fully cured — over-flash it and the next color won't stick.

Ink types

DTG — Direct-to-Garment

DTG is, in plain words, a printer for shirts. It is an inkjet printer that sprays water-based pigment ink directly onto the garment — full-color, photographic, unlimited colors in a single pass, with no screens at all. If you can print it on paper, you can print it on a shirt.

The process (five stages)

1. Artwork prep in special software (a "RIP") that drives the printer.
2. Pretreatment — spray a clear solution onto the garment and press it dry. This is the make-or-break step: it lets the water-based ink sit up and bond instead of soaking into the threads, and on dark shirts it's what keeps the white bright.
3. White underbase printed on dark garments (same role as in screen printing).
4. Color layer jetted on top.
5. Heat cure (press or tunnel dryer) to bond the ink.

Feel and durability: soft hand because the ink absorbs into the fabric; roughly 40–60 washes, keeping about 82% of color after 50 washes and fading gracefully rather than cracking.

DTF — Direct-to-Film (the fast-growing one)

DTF flips DTG around. Instead of printing onto the shirt, you print the design (including white ink) onto a sheet of PET film (a clear plastic film), coat it with a special powder, melt the powder, then heat-press the film onto the garment and peel the film away. It's a transfer method — the design is made first and applied second.

The process

1. Print the design + white ink onto the PET transfer film.
2. Sprinkle hot-melt adhesive powder (a thermoplastic glue powder) onto the still-wet ink.
3. Cure/melt the powder in an oven or heat press (no pressure) so it forms a sticky backing.
4. Heat-press the film onto the item (~300–325°F for ~15 seconds), then peel the film — "hot peel" or "cold peel" depending on the film.

Why DTF is exploding in popularity

• Works on almost anything: cotton, polyester, blends, nylon, leather, tote bags, hats, dark or light — no pretreatment needed (unlike DTG).
• Low setup compared to screen printing, so low minimums are fine.
• Gang sheets: you can tile many different designs onto one big film sheet, slashing the cost per design.
• Stock and apply later: pre-print transfers, store them, and press on demand.

The adhesive powder's grain matters: fine powder = smoother, softer feel; coarse = a raised, textured feel. The finished transfer is thin (~50–80 microns) but sits slightly on top of the fabric — more texture than DTG, softer than thick plastisol. Durability is roughly 30–50 washes, retaining ~88% color after 50 (slightly better color retention than DTG), with the main risk being edges cracking or peeling over time, especially if laundered too hot.

Pad printing — for curved and odd objects

Screen printing, DTG, and DTF all need a roughly flat surface. But how do you put a logo on a pen, a golf ball, or the curved rim of a mug? That's pad printing (also called tampography). It is an indirect method: a soft silicone pad lifts a 2D image and presses it onto a 3D or irregular surface.

The three key parts

• Cliché: a metal or photopolymer plate with the design etched (carved) into it. The etched recesses hold the ink.
• Ink cup: floods the cliché with ink, then a doctor blade scrapes the surface clean so ink stays only inside the etched design.
• Silicone pad: soft and deformable; it presses onto the cliché, picks up the inked image, then presses down onto the product, molding itself around the shape to lay the ink down.

PAD PRINTING CYCLE

 1) FLOOD + SCRAPE      2) PAD PICKS UP        3) PAD STAMPS
   cliche etched         soft pad presses        pad squashes onto
   ___________           cliche, lifts ink       the curved object
  |  ::logo:: |  -->        \   /        -->         \   /
  | ink in     |             \_/  (ink              __\_/__
  | etched dips|             pad   on pad)         ( o pen o )  logo!
   ----doctor----                                   \_______/
   blade clears top

Because the pad deforms, it can print on convex, concave, and uneven surfaces that no flat method can touch: pens, golf balls, mug handles, bottle caps, electronics, toys, automotive parts. Image area is small, and multi-color is possible but — like screen printing — each color needs its own cliché and its own pass with careful registration.

Embroidery — stitched, not printed

Embroidery is the odd one out: the design is stitched into the fabric with thread, not printed with ink. It looks and feels premium, textured, and is extremely durable.

How its economics differ — this is the interesting part

• Digitizing: a one-time step that converts artwork into a stitch file (instructions telling the machine where each stitch goes). It costs ~$20–$150 (often $40–$100) and stays on file forever, so reorders skip it.
• Cost driver = stitch count, not color count. This is the opposite of screen printing. Thread colors are essentially free once digitized, but a denser, larger design costs more because it has more stitches. A base rate of ~$11/piece up to ~5,000 stitches is common.

A note on dye sublimation (poly-only specialty)

You'll hear about dye sublimation, so know what it is. Heat turns dye-based ink into a gas that bonds into polyester fibers, leaving zero hand feel, no cracking, and true edge-to-edge "all-over" prints. The hard constraint: it only works on light/white 100% polyester (or poly-coated hard goods like mugs). It cannot print on cotton or dark garments. Best for jerseys, sportswear, and all-over-print fashion.

The merch decision — cost & volume trade-offs

Now the payoff. The two big levers are quantity and color count. Screen printing's high setup gets cheaper per unit as quantity climbs; the digital methods (DTG/DTF) start cheap and stay flat. The point where screen printing becomes cheaper is the break-even quantity, and it moves with how many colors the design has.

A widely-cited rule of thumb: DTG is cheaper under ~36 units, screen printing above — but always adjust for color count and fabric using the table.

How this touches your print software (PF360-relevant)

If you're modeling decoration in a print-shop SaaS, each method has a different cost shape, and your pricing engine must reflect it — a single flat per-unit price will silently overcharge small orders and undercharge big ones.

• Screen print: setup fee per color (number_of_colors × screen_setup_fee) + per-unit; quantity-tier breaks; a flash/underbase surcharge for dark garments.
• DTG / DTF: little or no setup, flat per-unit; price by print-area size; dark-garment (white underbase) surcharge.
• Embroidery: price by stitch-count bands + a one-time digitizing fee — and store the digitized file as a reusable asset so reorders skip the fee.
• Pad print: per-color cliché setup + per-impression; enforce a small maximum image size.

What to capture as product options: decoration method, number of ink colors, placement(s) (left chest / full front / back / sleeve), garment color (light vs dark → drives underbase logic), and fabric type (cotton / poly / blend → gates which methods are even valid).