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Kamran · October 21st, 2007

Dear Memebers,

We still have not been able to decide whether we should go with the Brother gt 541 or one of the new Kornits. We will be working from home, we understand that the Kornit needs to be located in our garage whereas the brother could be inside. We are wondering what level of noise the kornit along with the associated dryer would produce because of our neighbours.
Also we have heard that the Kornits give better results when used in conjunction with a gas oven due to a slightly increased water content in the air?

Also I would really appreciate any info on which dryers other members have used with the kornits and their experience with them. Has anyone used the LPG gas model?
Kindest Regards to you all as always,
Kamran

Kamran · October 21st, 2007

I'm not going to pretend to know what you mean but I'm going to try. We want to use the most enviromentally friendly ink we can and the Kornit obviously has the OEKO TEX certification and also the Kornit makes use be able to print in bulk at a lower cost as well as faster, we live in a residential area so we want to consider our neighbours feelings so I wondered if the Kornit with its Dryer would be very noisy.
Regarding commuting to work I'd consider the effect of your carbon footprint as much as you can to show consideration to the rest of the people on this earth, Thank you for your response even if I'm not sure what you mean,
kamran

PinkFreud · October 21st, 2007

Kamram....I appreciate deeply your concern for the enviroment....Without sounding defensive I have worked for many enviromental causes along with my daughter who has spoken at the United Nations representing her organization.
We are most proud of our fundraising activities the most recent being installing a water pump in a remote area in Kenya....The pump operated as a merry-go-round peddled by children which enabled the pump to extract water...
.....As far as digital garment printing the fact that the ink is water-based and not solvent based makes it much more enviroment friendly then other methods
.....My "commuting" statement above was merely a wisecrack analogy which required an understanding of irony....The point being that of the two machines you mentioned one is around 20 thousand dollars and the other machine is...oh I don't know 175 thousand dollars....the brother has been using water based inks for years while Kornit just recently started using water-based ink....additionally
since both machines deliver the same end product at a similar production rate one wonders why anyone in their right mind would spend 150 thousand dollars more on the Kornit...thus my silly analogy.....although having said this your question would be perfectly valid if you had an extreme amount of disposable income or were a buyer for an international corporation

Rick Bowers · October 21st, 2007

As far as price we just installed our new Kornit last week $75,000 not $175,000.00 as previously stated. Granted they do have a larger 2 pallet machine that costs more, which all the naysayers try to use for comparison. Also the high learning curve for prepping artwork has been made much easier than previoulsy stated. We are using a Hix 36 x 19 dryer, however some are using a 16 footer with good results. As far as running out of your garage I don't believe you would bother your neighbors.

PinkFreud · October 21st, 2007

Yeah I guess I am a bit of a naysayer when it comes to the Kornit ..still 50 grand isnt chump change and I am guessing you had additional expenses....but however more or less the machine price is....I will tell this.....I can print a black shirt on my used $5000.00 red T-Jet that would be of equal or better quality and washability then your Kornit

Robert72 · October 21st, 2007

humm. t-jet better washability than kornit??? Sorry but I seriously doubt it. I have a black t-shirt printed in front of me at a tradeshow by a kornit 932 and it holds perfect wash after wash. Maybe you're speaking of the new-next dupont white ink, because the actual chemistry of dupont is way behind the kornit solution, come on, the pretreatment resembles the glue I used at college when I was a child.

Actually I only could rely on kornit ink. I had really bad experiences with dupont white. And I still have to try the new whites from Dupont, Afford and Sawgrass (this last one, if they finally make them available to the general public). But it will be when I have my new machine dedicated only for darks.

PinkFreud · October 21st, 2007

We can argue this point all day but the fact that you have 1 black shirt from Kornit that washes well doesnt change the fact that I have made 1000's of black shirts that wash well.....I dont see how you can say that the Dupont inks are way behind the Kornit....Yes they may be slightly different chemically but not much....They both rely on the pretreatment/white lock and key method....Kornit only recently switched to the water-based inks after failing with the solvent based method....I think of all those customers who bought the $200,000 machine only to print on black unsuccessfully.....There is nothing that Kornit delivers that is worth the pricetag other then convinience of applying the pretreatment....A properly pretreated dupont shirt is not like "glue" it is pratically invisible..I would rather spend that Kornit money on 10 T-Jets, Flexis, DTGs etc to achieve maximum production output....actually I would probably buy an automatic pretreatment machine as well....Until the method for printing white in its current configuration remains, you are wasting your money on a Kornit....you will be making large monthly payments long after the technology has made the machine obsolete

tomtv · October 21st, 2007

the kornit is not loud, the air compressor you will use would be louder.

we were the first to have a hix on a kornit and the 3616 electric worked great, no issues and no washability issues.

Pink the point you make about the technology being outdated has great merit. This part of the industry is still young so those purchasing a kornit will need to do their numbers and double check that ROI calculator before committing to the 85-95K for the smallest model.

hope it helps but make sure you have the business to support it and a back up plan when something goes wrong. it happens to ANY machine.

tom

Justin Walker · October 21st, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by PinkFreud


	.....There is nothing that Kornit delivers that is worth the pricetag other then convinience of applying the pretreatment....Until the method for printing white in its current configuration remains, you are wasting your money on a Kornit....

Pink... REALLY? I've done the comparisons a million times on these, and other forums. There is really little argument that you SAVE money by owning a Kornit, if you print large numbers of dark shirts. I know I have easily saved $50,000 or more in the last 6 months alone, compared to if I had owned a Dupont based machine. And we only get busier and busier.

It all depends on your business model. There is nothing WRONG with owning a small format DTG machine - and I know for a fact that they can produce results as good as the Kornit if you know what you are doing. But you can't make a blanket statement like "there is nothing that Kornit delivers that is worth the price tag."

PinkFreud · October 22nd, 2007

Well Justin....There are exceptions to every rule....Not every machine has a "Justin" pulling the stings You may be a "Jack of all trades" but you are no "average Joe"......The point I make remains.....The basic process and the end product for all the digital garment printers on the market today are more or less the same....Yes the Kornit applies the pretreatemnt automatically but it does not increase production or product quality significantly....You cannot seriously say that 1 Kornit will equal the production of 8 or 9 standard digital machines especially if you throw in a pretreatment machine....My point is that if you have 150 grand to spend you are better off buying multiple standard machines and a pretreatmeant machine then 1 Kornit and a dryer..what am I missing?

zhenjie · October 22nd, 2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by PinkFreud


	You cannot seriously say that 1 Kornit will equal the production of 8 or 9 standard digital machines especially if you throw in a pretreatment machine....My point is that if you have 150 grand to spend you are better off buying multiple standard machines and a pretreatmeant machine then 1 Kornit and a dryer..what am I missing?

I think you're missing the point on the significant difference in ink prices between the Kornit and the Duponts. If you had the type of business to purchase and run 8-9 standard DTG printers then I'm sure your production would be fairly high. In that case wouldn't the Kornit end up saving you in ink cost and also labour?

PinkFreud · October 22nd, 2007

zhen...You are right I did miss the point of lower ink prices for the Kornit and it is a point well taken.....The lower ink prices would effect the ROI...But I still maintain that making such a large investment based on lower ink prices can be risky given the constantly evolving technology.

Kamran · October 22nd, 2007

PinkFreud, Zhenjie, Tomtv, Rickbowers thank you all for your continuing discussion you are all very helpful decent people. PinkFreud you must be so proud of your daughter she sounds inspirational. I am going to read and re-reread this thread to try to absorb the information you have all kindly allowed me to be part of,
Kindest Regards,
kamran

mk162 · October 22nd, 2007

You really need to examine your business model. We print an average of 1,000 prints per month with an average ink usage of $.75 per print. We have a total of 27,000 prints on our machine. So if I would have saved $.70 per print with a Kornit, we would have saved $19,000 on ink roughly. For 2 years it is still cheaper for us to have a Brother. It will still be cheaper come 2 years from now. By that time, we will more than likely be looking at a newer press.

It all depends on your business model. If you are just starting out, Kornit is a huge investment for essentially no sales.

Kamran · October 22nd, 2007

And Justin Walker, thank you aswell,
kamran

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