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Recently I've been flooded with questions regarding printing on 100% polyester using a DTG. For a long time now, this hasn't been an issue printing on white polyester. You simply need to use a special pretreatment like Dupont 5010 and you're good to go. However, printing on dark poly or wanting to use white DTG ink on a dark polyester is another matter.
Can it be done? Technically, yes. Epson has a cool new pretreatment that allows you to do so. However, from talking with other printers using it, I'm not 100% sold that the quality of the pretreatment is there just yet. You're very limited to what you can pretreat with it and with poly garments having lots of different treatments and fabric combinations, I don't recommend using it as a standard just yet. Epson and a couple other chemical companies have "cracked the code" and now the next step is to refine it.
There is a process where you pretreat the whole garment and print. This seems to work well since there is not an obvious stain on the garment from the area that is pretreated, but the cost of the required machines to do this are not justified for most single DTG shops. I do have a recommendation though! Firebird has 100% poly garments that are pretreated in this way and the feedback has been highly positive. I would definitely recommend checking out their FB2GO shirts. They also have a custom option for pretreating garments for you if this is a high need for your shop.
To summarize: Printing on 100% polyester is possible with a DTG, however, it's not recommended for darks outside of a couple factors. Your best bet, for now, is to stick with screen printing for dark 100% poly garments, use FB2GO garments and keep an ear out for more developments on pretreat for dark polyester.
PS: Polyprint gets its name from the Greek word Poly meaning much/many.
Can it be done? Technically, yes. Epson has a cool new pretreatment that allows you to do so. However, from talking with other printers using it, I'm not 100% sold that the quality of the pretreatment is there just yet. You're very limited to what you can pretreat with it and with poly garments having lots of different treatments and fabric combinations, I don't recommend using it as a standard just yet. Epson and a couple other chemical companies have "cracked the code" and now the next step is to refine it.
There is a process where you pretreat the whole garment and print. This seems to work well since there is not an obvious stain on the garment from the area that is pretreated, but the cost of the required machines to do this are not justified for most single DTG shops. I do have a recommendation though! Firebird has 100% poly garments that are pretreated in this way and the feedback has been highly positive. I would definitely recommend checking out their FB2GO shirts. They also have a custom option for pretreating garments for you if this is a high need for your shop.
To summarize: Printing on 100% polyester is possible with a DTG, however, it's not recommended for darks outside of a couple factors. Your best bet, for now, is to stick with screen printing for dark 100% poly garments, use FB2GO garments and keep an ear out for more developments on pretreat for dark polyester.
PS: Polyprint gets its name from the Greek word Poly meaning much/many.