White ink printing Costs

Ive the the white prepping good as I do these when doing stubby holders and printing T's so I aways have 2 or things on the go at once but I have some new designs with 100% coverage at 12x15 full print. I have never had a clogging problem nor do i do alopt of head cleans infact I do not do head cleans (only what the machine does itself) as it gets alot of use and is never turned of. I do 1 nozzel check in the morn and go for it. We also do not get many miss prints at all maybe 2 per 100 sometimes none for a couple of weeks. I think strict mantainence and cleaning elemenates alot of this especialy encoder problems. I just need to work this out quick. and by the wat we pay $440 incl Tax a 1lt bottle of white over here in Aus. So it is a bit more exp than you pay over there but we do get more for our shirts $20 per shirt with 1 large print and $26 with pocket logo and 1 large back and the shirts cost us more as well $4.50 per shirt cost. I am, thinking of charging $25 for the big 12 x 15 prints on a shirt

Just to be clear.

We print daily and maintain daily. A full 10 hours worth of printing is not uncommon but 8 hours is more the norm. Our shop cleans and maintains the Anajet at the start of the workday and at the end of the workday.

Despite this, sometime overnight humidity will drop and things will dry up faster. For whatever barometric or physic based-reason inks will separate faster. Or just to annoy me in the morning when I need to bang out 10 shirts, black will fire only half of its nozzles.

I strongly disagree that operator error is always at the heart of extended ink or machine cost. Granted if you follow all of the proscribed routines and along with some of the wive's tales, you will end up with a good understanding for your machine and a higher tolerance for the upkeep. That tolerance doesn't really lessen the hit on the wallet though when you have to run a nozzle purge 3 times to get it firing properly again and it eats 20 mins out of your work day. We sometime run a whole week without issue on all channels and nozzles and then for a week have to give the machine extra attention very time we start up white ink.

I accept it as a part of doing business with a DTG and the overall production keeps me in the black but I would be much more satisfied with the ink costs if the time it took to resolve an issue was shorter or if I could even just do ink charges/cleanings per line. That would lower my cost per white print by more than switching to a bottled ink printer.