[youngmi1969]

I made the mistake of purchasing a Spectra 3000 a couple of years ago without knowing anyone personally who ran one. I just trusted what the owner Jay was saying and the hype about it here on Tshirt forums. I thought I was asking all the right questions as I was an experienced DTG printer. Have been printing for 10 years and have 2 T-jets and a brother GT-541. I preferred the epson based printers as I thought the quality of the prints was far superior, than the brother, but liked the low maintenance. But I think any printer without white ink is going to be low maintenance.

To make a long story short , the spectra was a piece of crap. Printed maybe 100 shirts between changing heads and ink supplies numerous times, Rip was worthless, Prints were fine for simple prints, but terrible for photographic images, Support and training was nonexistant. I know this business can be tough, but with these spectras it was maddening. Remember, I have 2 t-jets, so I have lots of experience with printer frustrations, but, I love my old tjets, just wish they were faster .

So now I am in the market again, and I like that the brother now prints 1200 as opposed to the 600 of the 541,but I am very hesitant to believe everything I read and hear. I want to believe that the GTX is the answer and was going to seriously look into it, but when I went to their site and read the ROI, It brings flashbacks of all the BS I heard about the Spectra
Here is the link Brother GTX | ROI Calculator | Direct to Garment Printers

The most blatant lie I see is that the estimated ink cost is $1.39 for cmyk, white ink and pretreat ? the maintenance cost is an additional $.42.
I do not see how this is even close to possible. I figured my dupont based inks that are only $150/liter and $49/gallon for pretreat, cost me more than that. If I'm hearing right , people are guestimating
more like $3/shirt for inks and pretreats

I'm just really wary of false advertising and don't want to have another regret without doing my due diligence. Can anyone out there vouch that they are getting $1.39 prints ?

Not sure I would even mind if the costs were closer to $3, but I just don't like being misled, makes me wonder what else is misrepresented.

Also , if you are someone who loves this machine, could you pm your contact information. I would love to buy a sample from you , thanks!

 

[tusa]

That $1.39 for cmyk, white ink and pretreat is completely wrong.... however maybe they're calculating into the equation the white shirts also? So, some color shirts prints can be around $3 per print, but on white shirts it can be $0.50? I don't know how they came up with that number, but it is very misleading. Brother inks are not cheap and the auto cleaning cycles eats up white ink. Low maintenance comes at a cost.

While I think this machine is better than the competition, I don't think its perfect and maybe it will be even better in future models.

 

[youngmi1969]

Aha! I wasn't even thinking about cmyk only prints, since this stated cmyk, white, and pretreat. Maybe this is averaging out the cost between cmyk and cmyk plus white. That seems a lttlemore realistic.

Would any GTX printers share with me what you price a dark shirt at , lets say 25 qty dark 12x 12" 70% coverage at? with Dupont inks I charge $8 for prints on dark - print only , not including shirt. I think I would have to charge $10 or more - maybe no increase since the speed is so much faster though

You can PM me if you don't want to publicly share - thanks !

 

[Screen168]

I uesd GT361
I think Brother is not hosnest GT3 is fail.GTX is Better GT3 but ink is expensive

 

[tusa]

I would probably charge around $10 per print if they're doing 25 shirts. But it would depend on how much ink is being used.

 

[tijuanajackson]

are you kidding? brother lies about everything and only cares about big customers. they have since the 541. they have a stock price (not so great) to protect. brother is like any car company, super cheesy marketing and it's all lies when the numbers come out. they want to sell ink and that's that. they are in the ink business. they are a gross polluter and a seller of toxic consumables. they are basically a car company. all dtg printers are garbage annoying pains in the *** one way or another. pick your poison.

 

[gatorGRAFIX]

https://help.brother-usa.com/app/an...stions:-what-is-the-cost-of-a-print-on-a-gtx?

If my calculations are correct this shirt would have cost me $2.86 ea. to print (on a black tee I presume).

1.) Ink cost for one 700cc ink bag of white ink with shipping and tax comes to $238.47 per bag of GTX ink (for me anyways).

2.) Cost of 700cc of ink ($238.47) divided by the number of cc's in a bag (700), that gives me a cost of $0.34 per cc of ink used.

3.) $0.34 multiplied by the total number of cc's used to print the t-shirt (0.53cc CMYK + 3.67cc White = 4.2cc) comes in at $1.43 ea.

Your actual DTG printing costs for a printed tee does have a lot of variables such as size and the quality format chosen. I'd also say that looking at the chosen picture that was printed on the black t-shirt (not too big and narrow artwork) the estimated printing cost is pretty much dead on.

I seriously doubt that the cc estimation made by the Brother GTX is wrong. It isn't calculating the money for you, just the usage and I am pretty sure that the GTX knows exactly how much ink it prints on every t-shirt pass.