I know a lot of you have been using your DTG's for some time now, but I was wondering if anyone can remember how long (from their first print) it took until you felt 100% comfortable with your machine and how it prints? Would you say half a day? a day? a week? a month? Also, how much ink would you say you used until you were comfortable and getting consistant prints every time?
i wouldn't put a time frame on it...more like how many prints....i would guess it took me about two or three shirt runs to be comfortable with setting a file....as for loading the shirts, once or twice....
I know a lot of you have been using your DTG's for some time now, but I was wondering if anyone can remember how long (from their first print) it took until you felt 100% comfortable with your machine and how it prints? Would you say half a day? a day? a week? a month? Also, how much ink would you say you used until you were comfortable and getting consistant prints every time?
It's going to vary greatly from one user to another. A lot depends on your knowledge, or lack, of graphics software (Photoshop, CorelDraw...). You will be able to comfortably print white and light colored goods within a short time period. White ink is going to be a longer learning curve. Applying the pretreatment correctly, getting the underbase right, all take longer to master then CMYK prints. I have customers who are printing well within 2 or 3 days. I have others who have taken 2 to 3 weeks to get it. Figure on losing several dozen shirts in your learning process. Do allow yourself the time to get "comfortable" with the whole process before you start accepting orders. The worst thing to do is have a bunch of orders that need to be printed the minute you get your printer in. Every month or so I get a potential customer calling and asking if he can get his printer by Friday because he needs to print a job over the weekend and deliver it on Monday. In each case I explain that if they never ran a direct to garment printer before they need to give themselves the time to learn it.
So to answer your question - everyone is different in how much time they need. You will know by yourself when you've learned enough to feel confident. And remember that you'll always be learning and picking up new and better techniques as time goes by.
it took me about a month of time to be completly comfortable. i thought i could just jump right into printing and seeing a profit right out of the bat becuase i am pretty computer/electronically savy, but boy was i wrong! i ended up focusing on learing the system for a month and made sure not to take any orders until i was completely capable of putting out a solid product. Printing colors onto light shirts was very easy, and took only a few days to get down, but the white ink layer on dark shirts, the pre-treatment issues, and binding kept me from holding of dark prints for about 5 weeks.
Whenever we sell a printer to a new customer I recommend that they first learn how to properly print the CMYK colors and master that before staring white ink printing. Mastering white ink printing has the longest learning curve. When you first get your printer fill the white ink bulk system bottles with cleaning solution or distilled water (never use tap water). This way you can master CMYK printing without wasting white ink. When you've got the color printing down and want to start learning white ink printing just drain out the water or cleaning solution, refill with white ink, and start.
Sage wisdom from Harry here. I usually suggest that folks buy a case of white shirts and a case of dark shirts and plan on printing them all for practice prior to trying to sell output. Few folks follow this advice, but those that do generally do well once they are unde "live fire".
Comfortable With Machine? 
