[BBProd]

Hi, all-

I demo'd a DTG Kiosk last week and have a few questions about ink cost:
1. What's the cost range on ink when printing a shirt? I was at a distributor and one of my designs 'cost' 12 cents to print, which I thought was quite reasonable. (Fairly small, 5 color design on a white shirt).

2. How accurate is the estimate made by the DTG Ripping software? I'm assuming you can plug in what you are paying for your ink and that it is fairly accurate. Is this a fair assumption?

Thanks for your input!

Chris

 

[Don-ColDesi]

Hi Chris,

I'm not sure why you put a thumbs down on your post. Your question is a good one.

Yes, the software is accurate. Everytime that a drop of ink is fired it will fire a given amount of ink (measured in picoliters - which is [ready for this?] 1/100,000,000th of a liter) simply add up all of the droplets fired times the size of the droplet and you will get a number that is some percentage of a liter, multiply that number times the ink cost per liter (which you correctly assume is user-definable) and you get a good estimate of ink cost. Why do I say estimate? There is no way to accurately determin the amount of ink used up in head cleanings, through evaporation or during initial charging (or that is left in the cartridges on proprietary ink systems).

Hope this helps to clarify things!

 

[BBProd]

Hi Chris,

I'm not sure why you put a thumbs down on your post. Your question is a good one.

Haha, thats exactly what I asked myself a minute ago when I went to check the thread. For some reason it looked like a question mark last night!

Thanks for your response, Don!

Chris

 

[adrenaline]

Just to help a little. In Rip Pro when setting the ink costs I added another $55 per litre to the ink cost (each) and have found this pretty much gives me a spot on cost per print taking into account cleaning solution pre and general maintanence. This does all depend on how many prints you are doing as well. The more you do the cheaper the over all costs will be.

 

[Mistewoods]

Really good point- if you print daily the overall cost is less per shirt because on days you don't print you still need to do cleanings to keep the print head clear. For example on a 4800 based printer the simple clean or small clean uses 4.6 ml of ink. Not a lot but it can add up over time. Daily use usually prevents having do a more aggressive clean- the power clean- which uses 96.4 ml of ink.