I bought a 782 last December, had it a year now. Not exactly thrilled.
You WISH the cost was only $3.00 a shirt..
$3.00 a shirt, give me a break, is that what they're telling people now?
The cost of white ink will eat you alive unless you're doing huge volume, in which case
you don't NEED the savings anyway (referring to the new bulk white ink system which saves over 30% on white ink cost).
Not true, I personally have printed only 3000 shirts in 6 months at 23$(single units) a tee grossing an average of 10$ per tee, no exactly being eaten alive here, that includes tee and pretreat.
The raw ink cost with the 782 can EASILY reach $10 or more per shirt. That's YOUR cost.
Why is this not discussed at the trade show? Why don't they mention this in their low budget commercials? It can get up to $12-14. That's uncommon, but EASY to do. Every piece of art is different and the price will change drastically based on shirt color, the size of print, and quality you want to achieve. If you actually want the shirt to look good (imagine that) you need to put down MORE white and maybe (often) a 2ND PASS OF WHITE! Take your fantasy $3.00 shirt cost and throw it out the window. Whoever told you that was a salesman. In the real world, printing real art, it's higher.
Don't forget to add the cost of the pre-treat either!
Also not true, Max ink lay at 5+3 full 14x16 inches is 30cc in white, and if you add color, the white usage goes down, exemplified in the posted images at the bottom, that comprises a full 16x14 square pooling ( as in you could swim in it) with white, how can you reach 14$ if the price per cc on white is 60cents and on colors .68cents ( without any bulk savings, plain regular priced carts), to reach your 14$ in ink cost you would have to be printing 20cc of ink,and I dear anyone with a DTG to post a job with 20cc's of ink, brother, epson, kornit whoever, not cost but CC's, not to talk about the impracticality of such print: pools of white ( because at 5+3 prints look awful, and the tee can only take so much).
A consistent 16 cc of white or 10 cc of white plus 4 cc of color is unheard off in the course of my 2 years with brother printers. And a full preteated tee (16x19in) goes for .30 cents
Another allegory: a Prius MPg is around 40 my cousin takes it for a drifting session and he goes down to 10, is that a real scenario? I think not, is the Prius a car to go drifting? certainly not.
So if you are doing huge ink lays with maximum coverage, I have no idea why didn't you go whit a screenprinting auto press? didn't you do your homework before giving away your money? Since is the second time I throw that advice your way, I somehow do not feel sorry for you.
The first lesson, for me, was that the only way to make actual money is retail shirt sales ($15.00 per shirt and up). This explains why no one is buying these printers. There's a lot of financially smart people out there, apparently. I was not one of them. I bought this 782 in a hurry. Should not have.
In a hurry? its called IMPULSIVE BUYING, never a good thing to fall for.
I can't even tell you now many surprises there were after buying it. I felt like I just bought a fancy car from an A-HOLE dealer who hid a bunch of info (lied). I'm not saying that's what happened, that's how I felt.
feelings sometimes get in the way of reasoning, breathing helps.
Trying to make money doing wholesale quantity based runs is a waste of time unless it's running constantly, you have amazing connections/referrals or have some unique profitable nitch. Trying to compete with the screen print world is a joke. I know a guy with a Kornit running practically non stop wholesale and he's lucky if he breaks even, no pun intended.
What would you consider wholesale? 1000 10.000 1.000.000? This is about printing t-shirts not about owning printers, and that is where I see many people failing. You can buy a printer and have a clear direction in your head and make it, like a small retailer shifting from ink jet transfers to dtg and doing away with the paper, but anyone who thinks that I'll buy the machine and jobs will rain just because I can print them, and print them all, is utter delusional. I'll use an allegory here:
You are a professional snow plower, and you take jobs from highways to driveways , would you use a 100 ton snowplower on my driveway? HOPE NOT, as I hope I don't see you doing highways with a shovel. AKA: certain jobs require certain tools, is up to the mastery of the operator to know which to use.
If I could go back in time, I would not have bought the 782. It's been highly problematic too...
I don't think it's ever gone a month without issues. When it was brand new, it had registration problems, and it took Brother 3 months to fix it. They were not apologetic, they were like "stop complaining"... "user error"..
Brother loves to call everything "user error". Don't even get me started on the "Bill & Teds 2" Builders Emporium home-made quality Lawson pretreat machine which I've had for 6 months and has so many problems. $6000 for a gigantic pile of crap that can be bought at Home Depot.
Want to fix registration? start with glue on the platten ( spray,double tape, I don't have a preference), I agree that brother could do a better job telling people about how to prepare for optimal registration, and they might have some way to go until it is a streamlined process, but it has become a 2% scenario for me, so show some samples of problems and we might know from experience how to adress them, and if it is a legitimate complain call brother, I did.
I will speak highly of the print quality when the machine works and is not acting funny. I can't speak too highly of Brother or the experience of owning a 782 though after buying this machine. Just another greedy corporation. There's a lot of kobe beef and sushi that needs to be paid for in Japan. Lots of first class international airfare for executives that this white ink needs to pay for.
I'm I supposed to take your accusations seriously? what axe are you grinding here? against kobe beef and sushi? against 1st class tickets? surely against brother, but not exactly making sense are we? I hope you start calling all companies who make a profit greedy that'll show some coherence in your thought process.
I work with very high end products in another field of business (t-shirts don't pay the bills) and that's what frustrates me so much about these t-shirt printers, pretreaters, etc. When you compare them to the products from other industries I work with, they are JUNK!!!!!!!!!!! it's hard to work in an arena where craftsmanship actually means something, and then have to go spend $6000 on a pretreater which should cost $500 and NOT be pissed off. Brother charges $40 for a piece of plastic and $100 for a piece of rubber. They're worse than Porsche. There's a gigantic retail chain based in So Cal that prints their own shirts, they get special treatment from Brother. When their 782 broke (and yours will too), they got an instant replacement. I wasn't so lucky. Brother only cares about the big guy.
Except you, not a single 782 owner in this forum ( few but some) has seen any breaking down occurring, so we'll discuss this when the time comes, if it does ( I'm certain I'll have to replace 8 heads and probably tubes at a cost of around 10K some day, but plenty of users with 100K prints on their 541 and still going strong.) Your complains about cost for parts might be legitimate but buried in all this bashing it just looks like whining, and remember all is made in japan, with their wages ans standards you can buy made in china with the social cost inherent to it. I'm not a big guy, only buying 4 carts of white every 2 months and color every 3, and they are nice to me, they even sent a complimentary blue cartridge after we were having issues whit the blue head, I get free next day shipping straight from their european central in germany, so the inks are fresher than ice, they don't tuck me in bed or wake me up with a Breakfast Juice, but I can't complain.
The name "Brother" is misleading. Brother has always had an absolutely terrible reputation with printers and horrible customer service. I only have 20 years of experience with Brother printers. I'm not saying these garment printers are junk, they are the only brand I would even consider, but that in itself is just sad. "Brother" does not have a good reputation. I don't say this out of spite, it's true, and I've always known it. This white ink thing with Brother could've been done so much better and they would've sold way more units. Now they're desperate for sales. I think the pricing is off and they're overly greedy.
The name "OATMEAL" is misleading. OATMEAL has always had an absolutely terrible reputation with posts and horrible writing skills. I only have 3 months of experience with OATMEALS posts. I'm not saying these posts are junk, they are posted on the brother forum so it is only natural that we read them, but that in itself is just sad. "OATMEAL" does not have a good reputation. I don't say this out of spite, it's true, and I've always known it. This bashing thing with Brother could've been done so much better and he would've got more thanks you's. Now he is desperate for attention. I think the reasoning is off and he is overly ........ get the point already.
I'm out.