what the standard sheets measure, and how many transfers
actually fit on one.
Enter what you are pressing and how many. The calculator packs each design across the film and tells you the length you will be billed for.
Each design is packed as its own block and the blocks are stacked, which is the arrangement you can check by hand. The builder's packer interleaves designs and rotates pieces, so a real sheet usually comes in shorter than this. Billed length rounds up to the whole inch and never falls below the 3″ minimum.
DTF transfer film comes off the roll at 22 inches wide, and that is the number the whole trade is built around. You do not choose it; you choose how much length to buy. So a gang sheet is really one decision repeated: how many inches of a 22 inch roll does this job need.
That is also why nesting matters more here than in almost any other print job. Every inch the pack saves is an inch nobody pays for.
| Sheet | Area | Square feet | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13″ × 22″ | 286 sq in | 1.99 sq ft | Starter sheet, half the film width |
| 22″ × 24″ | 528 sq in | 3.67 sq ft | Two running feet |
| 22″ × 36″ | 792 sq in | 5.5 sq ft | Three running feet |
| 22″ × 48″ | 1,056 sq in | 7.33 sq ft | Four running feet |
| 22″ × 60″ | 1,320 sq in | 9.17 sq ft | Five running feet |
| 22″ × 72″ | 1,584 sq in | 11 sq ft | Six running feet |
| 22″ × 84″ | 1,848 sq in | 12.83 sq ft | Seven running feet |
| 22″ × 96″ | 2,112 sq in | 14.67 sq ft | Eight running feet |
| 22″ × 108″ | 2,376 sq in | 16.5 sq ft | Nine running feet |
| 22″ × 120″ | 2,640 sq in | 18.33 sq ft | Ten running feet, a common maximum |
The table below is a plain grid at a 0.125 inch gap on 22 inch film, which is the arrangement you can check with a ruler. Mixed sizes and rotated pieces usually do better than this, because a real packer fills the gaps a grid leaves. Treat these as the floor, not the ceiling.
| Transfer | Typical use | Across 22″ | Per running foot | On a 22 × 120 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2″ × 2″ | Small logo, sleeve, tag | 10 | 50 | 560 |
| 3″ × 3″ | Pocket print | 7 | 21 | 266 |
| 3.5″ × 3.5″ | Left chest, standard | 6 | 18 | 198 |
| 4″ × 4″ | Youth front, large pocket | 5 | 10 | 145 |
| 4″ × 6″ | Sleeve strip, small back | 5 | 5 | 95 |
| 5″ × 5″ | Small front | 4 | 8 | 92 |
| 8″ × 10″ | Standard front | 2 | 2 | 22 |
| 10″ × 10″ | Adult front | 2 | 2 | 22 |
| 11″ × 11″ | Adult full front | 1 | 1 | 10 |
| 12″ × 12″ | Oversized front | 1 | 1 | 9 |
Grid arrangement, 0.125 inch gap, no rotation, no edge padding. Pieces across is floor((22 + 0.125) / (width + 0.125)); rows is the same arithmetic down the length. Add edge padding and the usable width drops by twice the padding.
Look at the highlighted row. An 11 inch wide transfer fits one across 22 inch film, not two, because two pieces of artwork at 11 inches are exactly the full width and leave nothing for the gap between them.
Take that design down to 10.9 inches, a difference nobody will ever see on a shirt, and two fit side by side with room for a 0.125 inch gap. The same order now needs half the film. It is the single cheapest thing you can tell a customer who is ordering adult full fronts.
The same trick works at other widths. Anything just over a whole division of 22 inches (11, 7.33, 5.5, 4.4) is worth nudging down a tenth of an inch before you pay for a second column of empty film.
Print.App's DTF Gang Sheet Builder puts this arithmetic on your product page. Customers upload their transfers, set sizes and quantities, and the sheet packs itself with your gap and rotation rules. The summary shows them the length used and how much of the film they have already paid for is still empty, so the space above gets filled rather than binned.
You set the film width, the maximum and minimum length, and how it bills. You receive one transparent PDF or a 300 dpi PNG per sheet, ready for the RIP.
What follows is the running builder, not a picture of one. Add a design, set a size and a quantity, and watch it pack the film and report the length, the same arithmetic the calculator above does by hand.
Almost always 22 inches wide, because that is the standard DTF film roll width, with the length chosen by the customer. Shops typically sell fixed lengths from 24 inches up to 120 inches, and some go to 240 or 300. A 13 by 22 inch starter sheet at half the film width is also common.
It depends entirely on the size of the transfers. At a 0.125 inch gap on 22 inch film, a 22 by 120 sheet holds about 266 pieces at 3 by 3 inches, 145 at 4 by 4 inches, and 22 at 10 by 10 inches. The table on this page covers the common sizes.
Because the gap counts. Two 11 inch pieces are 22 inches of artwork plus the gap between them, which is wider than the film. Drop to 10.9 inches and two fit side by side with a 0.125 inch gap to spare, which halves the film the job needs.
Yes, twice over. It is what lets you cut the transfers apart without clipping the next one, and it is film you are paying for. A 0.125 inch gap is a common, safe setting. Tightening it fits more pieces but leaves less room for cutting error.
For the customer, yes, because gang sheets are billed by the length of film used. That is why nesting quality is worth caring about: rotating pieces and filling gaps can take real inches off a sheet, and the customer pays for every one of them.
Most shops price by the running inch or the running foot of film, often with tiers so longer sheets carry a lower rate, plus a setup fee and a minimum order. The length is the only variable that matters, because the film width is fixed.