Thinking about getting a DTG printer

[Typestries]

I have a customer with a few kornit machines. While kornit may not be in the same price or quality class as a desktop dtg, I can firsthand say the prints on it last. I hooked a friend up with him on 4c+white gildan UC shirts for staff. It's a small food place, and the staff shirts get washed and dried there everyday. Well over 200 washes and still looking good. I was skeptical, to say I'm impressed is an understatement with all of the DTG horror stories out there.

 

[Farmboy]

@farmboy

What's the issue with Brown (equip,service)? Who would you recommend?

Again let me say I have never printed on a Brown, so all I have is second hand info. Over the years I've heard everything from they don't hold registration to terrible service. They may have a place in the market, possibly their numbering press. I would recommend looking at M&R and Jennings. If you're looking for used make sure to look the press over well. Make sure the color arms are tight in the registration guides, if it's an all heads down press be sure all heads line up and that it rotates freely. Manual presses are pretty strait forward beast, but some shops abuse the pi$$ out of them, so check it over.

 

[signage]

If you are using a DTG that prints with the Dupont ink and the curing is done correctly they will last. Now when printing on dark/black shirts a pretreat machine will greatly improve the lasting of the print. One of the main system of the white printing is the pretreatment and once it is dialed in and done consistently the prints will hold up as good as screen printing.

 

[DazzaBling]

#1 NeoFlex purchase both solvent and textile print heads more versatile for your business
#2 Mod-1 if you just want to do t-shirts

both have excellent reputations and excellent customer service..

NeoFlex placed 3-4 of their owners in the top 10 of the DTG Royale Printing Competition NeoFlex taking championship. I toured with the "Tiger" team to several shows and I consider them the best in the business. I have personally worked with Belquette and their ink is great and has done wonders with our printers. You need patience..lots of patience.

 

[WCSign]

update.. washed my... wait, well my girlfriend washed and dried the belquette shirts.. her comment "the black one feels really smooth"

wash and dry #1 was a success

#2 is coming soon

 

[g&eprinting]

Examples I recieved from All American Neoflex.

 

[binki]

DTG printing has come a long way since it first came out. It can be profitable but it is often very frustrating and slow. We still have our machine from over 5 years ago and it still runs but we don't push it.

Our biggest seller for shirts is to women with rhinestones and glitter vinyl. Follow that by cut vinyl. We have 2 cutters that never stop running on apparel vinyl.

For photo prints on short runs DTG wins out though. Pre-treatment is the key for both light and dark garments. Done right it will hold up as well as screen printing.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Our biggest seller for shirts is to women with rhinestones and glitter vinyl. Follow that by cut vinyl. We have 2 cutters that never stop running on apparel vinyl.

Rhinestones with embroidery seem to do the best with the people that I get locally. I've never had a request for glitter vinyl.

The trend that I'm getting is that most people want multi decoration on shirts when you get those premium orders in. Typically short run orders, but they are also fun to do as well. Although sometimes they can be a little much. One order I had embroidery, rhinestones and sequins on shirts.

 

[WCSign]

Here are some pics of the belquette shirts after more than 6 brutal wash and dry cycles, ZERO special treatment was given.. they were done high heat NOT inside out (mostly with towels or denim)

 

[kico-abaco]

we use DTG Azon TexPro for last 6 months and I can say that prints are great, hold up long just like screenprinted and never had any problem.
White printing can be little tricky with dtg machines but you would experience 0% problems if you follow maintenance procedures.

 

[Farmboy]

You may also want to take into account what your future plans are. If your going after the small order market then a DTG might suit you well, but if you want larger orders from schools, business and leagues I would recommend screen print. As with everything in the apparel market, they both have their place.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

You may also want to take into account what your future plans are. If your going after the small order market then a DTG might suit you well, but if you want larger orders from schools, business and leagues I would recommend screen print. As with everything in the apparel market, they both have their place.

I would add in embroidery in those larger orders as well. That's when digitizing costs can spread out over the entire order. Back of jackets that schools sometimes get run into a couple of hundred dollars just for digitizing alone (yes digitizing does get that high even in today's times).

 

[advadv]

I was in the same situation. Have the same Roland 540, doing lots of business with lots of customers. Offering DTG seemed like a natural. Same art, same work flow. All of my customers were excited about being able to buy shirts from us. We made the significant investments into an Anajet mPower5. Now, almost 60 days into this machine, we have yet to print a salable shirt, have spent countless hours on the phone with tech support, and are in the process of replacing the machine one part at a time. I still like the business model, just be careful of which company you decide to trust for your investment.

 

[tradeup]

If you are not going to be printing several shirts a day -Stay away- The maintenance sucks and they clog fast.

If you are absolutely ready to get into it but unsure. Buy used and test the waters. That way you can resell and not lose as much money.

RTR services dot com sells bank repo and off lease units. They have a T-jet with bulk ink for 2000.00 and I deal with them all of the time. They accept offers. Probably get it for 1200.00 I bought 2 for 1250 ea. DTG HM1C they have several locations I go to the O'Fallon mo branch. If its listed more than a month they are more willing to deal. And they will pallet for shipping.

Mine I bought figured out it wasn't best for my needs and sold on ebay and made money one did 1700.00 one did 2000.00 and I got a 16x20 heat press Geo knight for free.

 

[advadv]

Yeah... we clearly made a mistake with this Anajet printer. They blew me off again today, printer still down. In a bad situation where we can't (won't) sell a printer that is not working properly. I could print several shirts a day if we could get the printer working, but 60 days into it, we cannot reliable print anything. We have 200 shirt blanks on the shelve ready to print and give away to our clients to market the service. Still excited about the business model, just went with the wrong company and now cannot find a way out.

 

[Thundergirl]

Still want a DTG printer?

I have an Anajet MP10 printer for sale. It retails for $38,000 but we are asking $25,000 OBO. It has printed well sometimes, other times we're on the phone with tech replacing parts or trouble shooting. We were sold a ready to go workhorse that turned out to be a high maintenance, finicky piece of equipment we no longer have the patience for. By maintenance I mean regular daily maintenance (not a big deal) AND regularly replacing parts or trying new parts they have improved (not what we signed up for). It is a machine that is a work in progress. Tech is helpful, and very nice, but it is not the great solution to garment printing we were sold. Expect to give it a lot of time and attention to get any kind of results. The shirts we printed have held up reasonably well, I have washed and dried the ones we made for our own use and they are still fine. If you have researched it, and still believe DTG printing is for you, this machine is a great savings over new. Ours is able to be demonstrated if you wanted to come to our facility in Joplin, MO. Call Jeff at 417-782-7291 if interested!

 

[binki]

We have a couple hundred shirts to do on DTG this week. I don't look forward to it, it is just too slow. But, we do make money with it. I will be starting this afternoon pretreating 100 shirts on both sides and then start running them. Pretty much a dedicated job so I won't be able to do anything else during that time.

 

[mark galoob]

Yeah, it's always interesting to me to see these samples printed dtg and they don't put older samples up or don't compare to other screen printed samples w same art same age of print. I guarantee screen print will win hands own every time. Is dtg a great idea...of course it is the business model is there. Problem is the tech is not. We had a brother for 3 yrs. used it every week and very few problems w it. Yes they are heavy duty and worked every time I turned it on to use it. The prints were the prob. They were fine after a few washes but after awhile they would fade. I finally sold machine after I became embarresed seeing my customers older shirts we did for them. Broke even on whole setup thank goodness. One of these days tech will catch up but it's not today

Mark galoob

 

[stitchup]

NeoFlex DTG all day long. Here are some of my recent prints:

 

[Doubletake]

F2000 Epson

I am very surprised this is not mentioned. I have been following reviews and researching DTG for a long time waiting for a good fit for our sign company. The F2000 seems to have corrected a lot of the issues. We have samples we have washed very second day for about 3 months and they still look excellent. We do not own one yet but it is on the top of our list. Neoflex would be a close second. Neoflex was our first choice it uses Epson printer anyway. Just feel that now that Epson is directly in the game it would have less troubles. Stahls and Joto and Belliquette all back Epson.

Ken