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3 6 G R A P H I C S P R O • J A N U A R Y 2 0 2 3 G R A P H I C S - P R O. C O M S C R E E N P R I N T I N G INTEGRATE C O U R T E S Y O F H I R S C H S O L U T I O N S I N C H O W - T O / T U T O R I A L S creen printers love large orders because they are cost-effective and relatively inexpensive to produce. One challenge many screen printers face is small runs of high-color designs or addi- tions to larger orders. Incorporating a direct-to-garment printer as a complement to screen printing creates a win-win situ- ation for the screen printer. A direct-to- garment (DTG) printer can service orders of any size with speed, efficiency, and a wide color gamut. Screen printers once resisted the idea of DTG because the tech- nology was new, and it was difficult to cre- ate a DTG product that closely matched a screen print of the same design. Today, many screen-print shops do sam- ple prints of certain designs with DTG and then run the large-scale production on the screen print equipment. Direct- to-garment printers can range in volume capabilities from a single piece to upward of 200 pieces per hour for mass-volume solutions. When DTG was first introduced, there were rum- blings that it was designed to replace screen printing; how- ever, the opposite is true. DTG is designed to let the screen printer do the jobs that screen printing does best and then handle the DTG jobs that are best suited for DTG. Screen printing and DTG can live together in perfect harmony. GP INTO YOUR SCREEN PRINTING BUSINESS