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.
I'm getting ridiculous prices for service. Can someone recommend the most inexpensive, high-quality, user friendly, low maintenence, best bag for the buck DTG printer that (if possible) prints GREAT quality with no issues, a work horse, does dark garment as well as light and if it does self heating.
All of these things that you are listing are in contradiction to each other.
Inexpensive: You can find a used dtg machine on ebay, but are more then likely to have problems as you would have no training and no warranty.
High Quality: Anything from Kornit which runs over 100K to the new viper or HM1. Those to me are probably the most high quality. Remember though that is only my opinion, and since I have the HM1 I tend to like dtg machines. As far as the Kornit, some like them and some dont.
User Friendly: Doing dark shirts is not user friendly. It is a process that needs to be learned and perfected.
Low Maintenance: Doing dark shirts is not low maintenance, not for the process of doing them and not for the machine.
Great Quality prints: They are all capable of high quality output if you learn the machine, and know what you are doing.
Self Heating? All machines have to have the prints cured, there is no self heating and curing machine out there, that I know of.
All of these things I listed above are the reason for the " Ridiculous prices"
When people spend the time and money and invest in this technology, they do not work for free.
Then need to get paid what is fair for the work that goes into the printing. These are not like screen printing where you can burn a screen, and then make 5000 shirts in high production, each shirt needs to be pretreated, loaded and cured separately . These machines are best for high color, high detail, low volume printing. Its really important to understand what the best fit for this machine is. If you are not comfortable with the price to outsource to a dtg printer, I highly doubt you are going to be happy with your cost of printing owning one, when you are looking for low price. To print a dark shirt full front image, you are looking at just in ink and pretreatment cost, not including the shirt between $3 to $4.50 per shirt.
That is just ink and pretreatment cost. Add that another $2 for the shirt and you are up to $5 to $6.50 per print. Hopefully this will help you understand the cost of doing dtg printing better.
__________________
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
All of these things that you are listing are in contradiction to each other. No they are not.
Inexpensive: You can find a used dtg machine on ebay, but are more then likely to have problems as you would have no training and no warranty.
High Quality: Anything from Kornit which runs over 100K to the new viper or HM1. Those to me are probably the most high quality. Remember though that is only my opinion, and since I have the I tend to like dtg machines. As far as the Kornit, some like them and some dont.
User Friendly: Doing dark shirts is not user friendly. It is a process that needs to be learned and perfected.
Low Maintenance: Doing dark shirts is not low maintenance, not for the process of doing them and not for the machine.
Great Quality prints: They are all capable of high quality output if you learn the machine, and know what you are doing.
Self Heating? All machines have to have the prints cured, there is no self heating and curing machine out there, that I know of.
All of these things I listed above are the reason for the " Ridiculous prices"
When people spend the time and money and invest in this technology, they do not work for free.
Then need to get paid what is fair for the work that goes into the printing. These are not like screen printing where you can burn a screen, and then make 5000 shirts in high production. These machines are best for high color, high detail, low volume printing. Its really important to understand what the best fit for this machine is. If you are not comfortable with the price to outsource to a dtg printer, I highly doubt you are going to be happy with your cost of printing owning one, when you are looking for low price. To print a dark shirt full front image, you are looking at just in ink and pretreatment cost, not including the shirt between $3 to $4.50 per shirt.
That is just ink and pretreatment cost. Add that another $2 for the shirt and you are up to $5 to $6.50 per print. Hopefully this will help you understand the cost of doing dtg printing better.
If you can do dark and can do a front and back print for $6.00 - you've just earned a 10,000 shirt contract.
Last edited by sunnydayz; September 14th, 2009 at 05:41 PM.
Reason: removed contact info per forum guidelines.
Ummm that would not be happening That would be the cost of only the products used to make those shirts. That is not including overhead such as machine cost, utilities, rent and all the other things it cost to run a dtg machine. That was my point, is that the cost once you add your overhead and all of your products accounts for those high prices you seem to think you are getting Did you try contacting contractdtg.com as I referred to you?
__________________
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
Oh and I missed one part of your post, that price was what it would cost me to do just a front print, not a front and back. For a front and back you would need to double that ink and pretreatment cost.
__________________
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
Ok I looked at that printer and I can say I have never seen it before. I also read the description saying that it prints on dark shirts, but then when someone asked a question down at the bottom it says it does not print white ink. It appears to be one of the many Chinese dtg machines that you can find on ebay. I can say I have seen several buy them here and be very unhappy with their choice. If you do a search of the forums for Chinese dtg, you will see what I mean. I myself would never buy a machine like that one. It is not a name brand and chances are if it is out of the country, support would be non existent.
I would say if you got a price for $5 per shirt front and back, that is a great deal. I do not think you would find a better price then that. The reason I told you in another thread to contact someone with a Kornit, is because the Kornit inks are cheaper plus the machine does the pretreatment as part of the printing process, therefore eliminating one step that is normally manual. With the Kornit they are able to print a bit cheaper then the smaller format machines.
__________________
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
I was also just looking again at that printer and it only prints a standard letter size print, the 8 x 11. That is a very small print. My machine prints 13 x 22 inches just to give you an idea of a standard print size of even the small format dtg's
__________________
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~~~Mark Twain BobbieLee www.brightlittlebeginnings.com
sunnydayz said "To print a dark shirt full front image, you are looking at just in ink and pretreatment cost, not including the shirt between $3 to $4.50 per shirt.
"
he/she was referring to what his actual costs would be. on top of that he would have to add labor and overhead and profit to come up with a price for you.
We run Kornit printers, but we would need more design details to calculate actual ink costs. Size, color, white space etc and would only confirm price when we had a chance to run the graphic through our rip to calculate ink usage.
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Canadian Digital Fulfilment Provider - Kornit/Brother www.nextshirt.com
Last edited by sunnydayz; September 14th, 2009 at 05:43 PM.
Reason: removed self promotion per forum guidelines.
It's a bit confusing because your post seemed to both be asking about the machines themselves, which makes it seem like you're doing research on investing in a DTG machine and also asking for a referral for someone to print for you (which is a duplicate of your existing request in the correct area of the forumhere and here)
Even doing it yourself I don't see it being possible to print a full front and back print on black shirts for less than $6. Once you figure in ink, labor, pretreatment, machine cost, etc you will be getting pretty high cost.
Also figure in how long it would take you to do 10,000 shirts. I have 3 printers and that would be almost 2 months worth of production time.
I found a vendor that will do lights for 2.80 and darks a little more. So, I think it's possible. I do like how you cater to ecommerce, but the 100 per month, the shipping charges of 4.50 plus a handling charge is too much. Your print prices are good for what you do, but the extras unfortunately killed it for me. Unless your flexible.
Bottom line, I can't spend more than 7.50 on a shirt - regardless of anything. Let me know.
Need a DTG Printer that Does Dark Shirts 
Re: Need a DTG Printer that Does Dark Shirts 
That would be the cost of only the products used to make those shirts. That is not including overhead such as machine cost, utilities, rent and all the other things it cost to run a dtg machine. That was my point, is that the cost once you add your overhead and all of your products accounts for those high prices you seem to think you are getting 
