US guide
US fixed sheet sizes: one long sheet or several short ones
Many US DTF printers do not charge by the metre or the foot. They sell a fixed menu of sheet lengths, each at its own price, and your job is packed onto whichever sheets hold it. This guide explains what a fixed sheet is, how the builder chooses between them, and how inches and millimetres relate in the calculation.
What a fixed sheet is
A fixed sheet is one length from a printer's own set list, for example 24 in, 60 in or 120 in, all cut from the same film width. You do not choose a length freely: you buy one of the sizes the printer sells, at the price that size carries. A UK printer more often charges a rate for each length used, with no set sizes to choose between.
Buying a fixed sheet size that is longer than your job wastes the unused part of that sheet, because whole sheets are charged and the unused film is not refunded.
One long sheet or several short ones
A printer's price list rarely falls in a straight line: the price per inch is often lower on a longer sheet, but not on every step of the list, because each size is its own listed price, not a rate. That means the cheapest way to cover a given length is not always the smallest number of sheets. Two shorter sheets can cost less, together, than one longer sheet that would also hold the job.
The worked example below, computed from a real printer's own sheet list, shows this happening.
How the builder chooses a plan
For your packed designs, the builder works out a plan: which of the printer's sheet sizes to buy, and how many of each. It compares several ways of doing this:
- filling sheets of just one size, for every size the printer sells;
- filling the longest sheet first, then finishing the remainder on the cheapest sheet that holds it;
- for small jobs (8 copies or fewer in total), every way of grouping the copies onto sheets;
- for larger jobs, a bounded search over mixed sheet sequences, which stops once it has done enough work to be confident it has not missed a materially cheaper plan.
The builder keeps whichever plan has the lowest total price. If two plans cost exactly the same, it keeps the one with fewer sheets. Whether copies fit on a sheet is itself worked out by an efficient layout method, and the search for larger jobs is bounded rather than exhaustive, so the plan is called an efficient layout here, not a proven cheapest one.
Inches and millimetres
The calculation itself works in whole millimetres only. Inches are converted to millimetres, and rounded to the nearest whole millimetre, at the point a size is entered or shown: for example 12 in is 304.8 mm exactly, which rounds to 305 mm. That small rounding step happens once, at the edge of the calculation, not on every step inside it.
Worked example
20 copies of a 10 in × 12 in design (254 × 305 mm after rounding), 5 mm spacing and a 10 mm edge margin, printed on Transfer Kingdom's 559 mm (22 in) film.
The builder's plan uses two sheets, not one:
- Sheet "24in" (559 × 610 mm): 2 designs placed.
- Sheet "120in" (559 × 3048 mm): 18 designs placed.
That places all 20 copies, at a total of $88.98 before sales tax. A single 180 in sheet also holds every copy on its own (559 × 4572 mm), but costs $94.99 on its own, more than the two-sheet plan. Material waste across the two sheets bought is 24.2% of the film area, because whole sheets are bought and some film on each one is not used.
Checked 2026-09-25 from the printer's own page: Transfer Kingdom's price list. Prices change; check the source before you order.
Price your own job
The builder runs this same packing and pricing for your own designs, at every listed printer, including printers that sell fixed sheet sizes.