I fully disagree. Transfers? Really? Leave the transfers for the kids school projects and charity car washes. I did transfers for years and when I finally made the jump into
DTG, there was no comparison.
DTG provides a soft touch especially on whites and lights, superior washability and no transfer halos at the edges of your images. Also, whites on darks! Where you make the BIG bucks. It's what people want. I do 2:1 black/coloured shirts versus white on my Fast T-Jet 2.
I've had my refurbed T-Jet2 now for 2.5 years and have made excellent income off of it. Parts and supplies are still widely available and I've experienced no problems with my suppliers who have been excellent in helping me out when I need it. T-Jet 2's can be had from Equipment Zone regularily on eBay for around $10k. One of the best investments in my print business I've ever made.
My machine is still running strong and printing like new. Now, it wasn't easy as first - especially with white ink which I dove into right from the start. There's a very slow learning curve using white and keeping your whites solid I found but if you follow a strict regimine of daily maintenance and regularily scheduled maintenaince, you'll be fine. Don't think there's alot - about 5 minutes a day for basic daily maintenance and about 1hr a month on top of that I'd figure.
There are many small things you have to do to ensure quality whites. The maintenance is one but there are also dos and don'ts in prepping your image, understanding how to use the rip to setup your underbase, keeping your ink levels high, etc. etc. I think I've encountered almost every issue there is out there - most of which are products of operator error (me) making mistakes but then learning from them. Now I haven't owned any other or worked on any other
DTG machines but I'd imagine as they basically all share the same technology, they share many of the same issues/problems.
Colour on white or light shirts - a no brainer. You can crank them out all day without any issues or having to keep a close eye on things. Use Fastbright to improve colour 'pop' and increase washability. Use good shirts - I use Gildan 2000's -- great weight to hang onto the ink wash after wash. I have shirts I made at the beginning I still wear and have washed countless times and they still look great.
From my point of view, don't get into
DTG with a T-Jet2 (or probably any other machine) if you don't have the patience or passion to figure out 'what's going on?' or 'why is it doing that?'. But if you have the right mind set, you'll be just fine and producing tonnes of shirts fast and with few problems. The included manual just touches the surface on most issues -- these forums probably hold your best solution if you're wanting to troubleshoot issues.
Need some feedback from T-jet 2 users 
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