I'm new here and I'm looking into building my first DIYDTG printer, but I'm not sure where to start.
The "Mission accomplished "license to thrill"" thread seems to be where all the information have been shared, but with almost 5000 posts dating back to 2010 its a lot of reading with a lot of outdated information I guess..
What is the best printer to use for a DIY DTG build? I've seen a lot of post of users building with older printers that are out of production by now. I guess I could get a used one, but Is it best to get a modern one?
Well building a DTG printer yields a lot of questions before you start.
First and most important is will you be printing consistently? DTG ink is very heavy (especially white) and if you let it sit for even a few days, you can start start having problems depending on a lot of factors. So if you want to keep your printer running well, expect to be printing at least every couple days or expect to be doing a lot of maintenance.
Second is do you want to print on just white shirts or do you want dark too? White shirt DTG printers will cost less to build because you can use older 4-color printers (CMYK) and parts will most likely cost less. A dark shirt DTG printer requires an 8-color printer so you can run CMYK in four of the color slots and White in the other four to put down a White base on any dark colored shirts. 8-color printers will cost significantly more for parts. You can build a dark shirt DTG printer with 6-color printers but then it's putting down half as much white ink and the quality won't be the best without doing two passes of white.
A popular printer for white-only shirts is the Epson 1400/1430 (6-channel printer running CCMMYK) and you can find a lot of information about them and DIY builds here in the DIY section. To print dark shirts as well, I'd recommend looking at the Epson R3000 (what I have) or the new Epson P600 (it's replacement). These printers and most printers going up in the chain (Epson 3880) have what's called a "Pressurized ink system" where it basically pumps air into the cartridge to assist pushing the ink through the ink lines and out of the printhead. This helps enormously in keeping the white ink flowing and gives much better results. Also, both of these printers have 8-channels of ink so you can run CMYK+WWWW for one-pass printing. This is an example of a pre-built Epson R3000 DTG printer printing on a dark shirt in two-pass mode (white ink layer first, then color after). This is an example of the same printer doing a one-pass print on a dark shirt on the highest quality setting.
As far as buying the printer new or used, either way you'll be cleaning all old ink out of the printer's printhead and lines before loading it with new DTG ink. So as long as it's working, I always buy used.
Do some more research on these forums between white shirt and dark shirt printing and mods for the printers I've listed. Also go on Ebay/Amazon/etc and do some price shopping for these printers, and expect to buy at least two of them within probably the first few months if you're doing it all yourself just for extra parts because you (like me) will probably mess something up along the way by accident.
This information should give you a better gauge at what you're looking at doing and what direction you want to take.
I've read before that you need to print consistently and that shouldn't be a problem most of the time, but I do normaly go traveling during winter. Isn't it possible to empty out the ink and maybe fill it up with some kind of ink thinner or something when you go away for a long time?
I do need to be able to print on black shirts so I guess I'll try to look out for a used R3000 or P600..
Where do I find the most up to date plans?
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