I have been searching the Kornit forum here trying to get a sense of what other Kornit users think are the actual costs for printing on dark shirts using their 931 or 931DS? What is the actual ink cost on printing an 10" X 18" image on a black shirt? The image has a white channel underlay and we're printing on a basic Anvil 979 black t-shirt. Also how many prints per hour, printing on black shirts. are you able to do with the same (or approximately) same size image? Thanks.
I have a 931 and we have found that the true ink cost for a dark print 14x18 to be around $2.75 per print using one pass with white and using the "interlace" option. Prints take about 2 mins 45 seconds. Not exact, but pretty close... Hope that helps.
Adrian, thanks so much for the feedback. Your print time is consistent with our print time of about 2:45 - 3:00 per print of 14 X 18 on dark shirt with white underlay. Curious how you came up with the $2.75 ink cost? That seems really high relative to what we're figuring? What method did you use to calculate ink cost?
no. I have had my machine for almost a year...it is impossible to exactly tell what the shirts cost to print... the machine waste ink period..it purges and waste..thats what I call it..But it prints great... I have had some minor things..but we have worked through them... I just wish the ink would go down... I really don't see why its so high anyway.... If it was cheaper...way cheaper..You could invest in multiple machines...but buying ink cost as much as the payment on one of these things.
Ken
Ken, Do you know how many shirts you have printed since you owned the machine? You should be able to figure out how much ink you have purchased. Dividing the total ink purchased by the shirt printed would give you the average cost of ink per shirt.
We never did this when we had our Kornit, wish I had.
We ran the machine for 3 years. We ended up with about 40 gallons of waste ink. I still have it in a barrel.
We ended up with about 40 gallons of waste ink. I still have it in a barrel.
haha I had huge containers of it stored in the old shop, before we moved... When we finally packed everything up, I had to figure out how to dispose of 20-30 gallons of waste. That was fun.
IT WORKS GREAT!! but it does use lots of ink..the price to print a shirt is really hard to judge...sure if you walk up at a demo and ask how much does it cost to print that shirt...and they say 50 cents..that might be true..but its also going to go waste 5.00 on a purge after 5 more shirts...so you have to figure that in to the cost...and those prices are just guessing prices...we have had it about 8 months and I still can't figure out how much it cost to print a shirt... I know , I know I am going to get 50 emails saying divide the number of shirts you have printed by the cost of the ink you have bought... BUT...that still dosen't tell me what job b is going to cost tomorrow on a weird size... I mean really how many of us print 8x11 boxes?? The machine really needs to tell us what the print cost will be... They know how much the ink cost , the size of the print, if it has an underbase....it should figure this up for you and give you a print cost price on the machine...that way you can figure that and the garment price and you won't have to just guess... Cause every time I guess I end up ruining 5 shirts and loose the profit for the job! and it will do weird stuff from time to time.. over 200,000 for the machine and it comes with a computer with about 500 megs of memory....?? My computer screen wont display the program half the time and I know that's because of the lack of memory this thing came with... whats up with that?? I mean really, how much does memory cost? its pretty cheap the last time I checked. Its just little goofy stuff like that will drive you crazy.. But it prints great!!
every different color shirt is a different setting.....say if you have 30 shirts gildan 2000 black...well 20 of them will print great and all of the sudden...they start printing like crap or they come out of the dryer and they are way lighter ....then you get to checking and one size of the stack is made in a different country...so the fabric is different... so, that means you should have used more...or less pre spray...reall ... Just stuff like that....
We ended up adding a ton of memory to our PC and it has helped tremendously. The frequency of the purges should be adjusted in your app file. Although it's recommended that the machine is shut down completely daily, we only shut down on the weekends. If you close the program with the tray up, you should be fine. That has saved us a tremendous amount of ink buy not starting up and shutting down.
We ended up adding a ton of memory to our PC and it has helped tremendously. The frequency of the purges should be adjusted in your app file. Although it's recommended that the machine is shut down completely daily, we only shut down on the weekends. If you close the program with the tray up, you should be fine. That has saved us a tremendous amount of ink buy not starting up and shutting down.
Thats great! we have been shutting down everyday...that would have been good for them to tell you! I adjusted the purge times in the app to the point it was not printing good and then went back a little...prints good now.. Thats wonderfull to know!!! Thanks so much!
The user razorcr and I are one in the same.... Didn't realize i had 2 accounts... One thing that may help, is you control the humidity at the head. The more humid the better. We actually rigged up a standard clothing steamer to run up between the pallets and push steam towards the head. It was just a steamer that we picked up at Target. We took the plate out of the center and ran the hose to there. For us, it has eliminated the need for a purge so often. It has also increased the ink flow for small prints on dark shirts, as it had a tendency of ghosting the image every 3 prints.
True ink costs per print on Kornit 931DS? 
