Discuss the various aspects of direct to garment printing. DTG printers include Brother, T-Jet, Flexi-Jet, DTG Kiosk, Kornit, Mimaki, Tex-Jet and others! Discuss and learn about this up and coming printing technology.
Does anyone know of any inks for printing in dark garments for DTG printing ? I have knowledge of the Dupont, Fast ink , Fastink2 ,Arakis textile ink , FABu-Last-INKs ,Flexi-Jet . Do you know of any other brands of the same type of inks? What problems can arise from using these inks in production?(details) I’ have an Epson 4800 based machine .Do you know what printing inks are better , and with lower cost ?
From what I know, there are only about 5 main ink manufacturers for DTGs.
- Dupont
- Romenhaus (??)
- Nanojet
- Brother
- Kornit
Several of the DTG manufacturers just private label the ink of one of the ones listed above. Not sure if Brother or Kornit do any private labeling. Most of the companies use Dupont or Romenhaus (??) ink. It might be real tough to purchase directly from these companies though. Good luck.
You put together a pretty good list there. I'm not yet convinced that Brother or Kronit makes there own inks, they most likely OEM them as well. You did miss at least 4-5 other manufacturers (at 3 of which I have had contact with). Point of note - Nanojet does not manufacture ink, they formulate it and it is manufactured by a third party. The only proven white solution is DuPont - though a couple others do have a white. And, no, the major ink manufacturers will not sell direct to you, besides - do you really need 18-20 liters of a given color at a time? If so, let's talk, I may have a special discount level for you if you pruchase in that volume!
Push come to shove, virtually all of these manufacturers are going to require something like $10K initial order for ink! That's a lot of ink!
More will enter the marketplace as we continue to grow - BASF, Kimberly, etc...
Thank you for your participation. I have heard that many companies are on the final tests to produce and sell inks for dark garments such as LECHLER S.P.A. , BASF and Lyson.
I think that 20 litres of ink per color are too much for just one Epson 4800.
I think it's better to buy small amount of ink (1-2 lt per color a time) from an OEM than from a private label distributor because pigment ink have too short expiration time before it become useless.
Is it so important that some companies suggest using the whole ink within about 4 months?
A sum of ink labels that are mentioned in this thread .
Point of note - Nanojet does not manufacture ink, they formulate it and it is manufactured by a third party. The only proven white solution is DuPont - though a couple others do have a white. And, no, the major ink manufacturers will not sell direct to you, besides - do you really need 18-20 liters of a given color at a time? If so, let's talk, I may have a special discount level for you if you pruchase in that volume!
Don
SWF East
"I ink, therefore I am!"
Just to set the record straight here Nanojet Ink is very much a manufacturer of inkjet inks. All of our products are made from the principal raw ingredients in our manufacturing facility in the UK. Nanojet Ink sells a large quantity of ink worldwide and to our customers it is very much a proven solution.
I am not here to start an argument on this matter, but I believe it was you who told me in an email that your company only consisted of 5 or 6 employees (2 of which were doctorates if I remember right). Am I mistaken about this?
Don
The last thing I want to do is re-hash old arguments with you but it is purely an assumption on your part that we don't manufacture. It is correct that we are a fairly small company with two doctorates on staff (neither of who is afraid to get their hands dirty) but in what way does that make us incapable of manufacture? This just allows us to be a dynamic and modern company at the forfront of technology. In fact we believe it is somewhat an advantage to have a tight core team of staff. This means that every member of the team is fully trained in every aspect of the manufacture and that the process can be tracked and monitored extremely closely. This makes us a very adaptable and we have been known to sort out specific issues for specific customers within days where other manufacturers would take weeks and even months to decide whether it is worth their while or not. It is being a smaller company (and I mean "small" in terms of personnel numbers only) that allows us to provide a very personal service to each and every customer.
Quick question on the "equipment issue". Are you indeed selling hardware? And if so, there is a picture of a DTG Kiosk on your website, have you become a dealer for YES/Impression Technology Europe?
Don
At this current time we are not selling any hardware solutions. We are often approached to give machine recommendations and as such have done a significant amount of beta testing. The image appearing on our website is purely as an indication as to the type of hardware solution available. However I should say that we have been testing our inks on a DTG Kiosk supplied to us by Impression Technologies basically since it's inception, working with them on several improvements to the machine. Nanojet have had no problem recommending it as a very good printer. In fact we have been running a Kiosk using Nanojet inks for the best part of 10 months every day and have not had any clogged nozzles, have never replaced a head or changed dampers.
Simon, would you recommend switching from Dupont inks to Nanojet in a Flexijet printer, and what process would you suggest using to clear the lines and print head before loading Nanojet inks?
1. Are there distributors in the US or the Caribbean?
Brian
Jamaica
Brian, let me step in here. If you do use "other" inks, you should be aware that different ink might need different "profiles" to make sure that the colors intended are infact the ones printed. If you use RGB and a profile is used, you may have to target colors to have them print as you would like. If you can send CMYK directly to your machine, you could change your visual (Monitor) gamut to match what you need on the printer side. What I'm saying, is that manufacturers of machines will have profiles based on "their" ink, so if you switch brands...you may have to adjust a little to get accepable results. I wouldn't recomend using CMYK from one and White from another (Rohm and Haas and Dupont for instance).
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Dtg Inks For Dark Garments 
