Direct to Garment

[Neil Speirs]

Don’t know if your aware of this site Dan, loads of unbiased views on DTG machines. http://www.t-shirtforums.com/direct-gar … -printing/

I personally think they are way to expensive at the moment but would consider one in the half price January sales 😉

[Dan Osterbery]

interesting…… I am of the same opinion, but we seem to get more and more people wanting runs of this style of t-shirt..

cheers

Dan

[Earl Smith]

I am looking at them too. Waiting on samples to do a wash test.
At the end of October we have a fair here in Germany where many of these printers are shown (VISCOM).. I will let you all know about the wash tests after I get some at the show.
The problem seems to be with the white ink. When printing onto light colours and not using the white then they are perfect.
The seller of the T-Jet has told me that black shirts using white ink wash perfectly up to 30°c. Here is the problem, how can I tell my customers to wash so low? Also the longer they are dried ,5mins or more, then the better they are.
At the moment for me they are far too expensive and too much trouble to maintain.
Here is another site for these machines. http://www.inkjetgarmentprinters.com/forums/index.php
My 2 cents worth.
Earl

[Mark Ford]

Dan,

We have a Brother GT541 and it’s been a superb piece of kit. The big downside as most people will tell you is that it doesn’t have a white ink option and is one of the more expensive machines despite this. However if I had the option to buy again I’d still get this machine over those with white ink options. We turn it on, nozzle check, occasionally do a head clean if any nozzles are blocked and start printing. No pre-treatment hassle, no blocked heads etc and durability of prints has been excellent.
Don’t let the white ink option put you off.

Happy to help anyone who may be thinking of buying one of these beasts.

Mark

[Mark Jahn]

There was a good article in Printwear and Promotion magazine this month about DTG which made me realise how much is involved with the technology. It’s partly the price putting me off investing in it though and that age old problem of printing onto dark substrates.

I was shown a T Shirt recently which was apparently DTG printed.With a little stretch of the fabric I could see the design cracking immediately – a bit like a cheap vinyl print on stretchy material. I’m not sure whether this was in fact a DTG print though and I’d love to hear from any DTG printers about the durability of the print etc.

[Mark Ford]

Mark,

I can only speak for results from our Brother but cracking is not an issue at all, the print can best be described as similar to sublimation in the fact that it becomes part of the material rather than sitting on top of the fibres.

Longevity of print is a lot down to curing ie heatpressing after printing (ensuring correct temp and time). We did an order last month for a food festival and offered a lower price for screenprinting due to the volume, our client preferred the dtg prints we had done last year and commented they are practically as good as when they were delivered and he wore his garment week in week out.

We have never been concerned about not being able to print darks, and the plus side is that with new business you can then cross sell all of your other services. An order for 8 t-shirts for a new customer recently has since turned into over a grands worth of pvc banners and signage.

Mark

[Dan Osterbery]

Hi Mark,
thanks for your input! What is the cost involved in producing a t-shirt with the brother, what is the time frame and how steep is the learning curve? We have experience printing t-shirts with vinyl, printed vinyl, and transfers. How would you say they wash, does the colur fade on the first wash like transfers or is it a gradual process?? We are off to spains sign show next week and I am hoping there will be a few machines there to play with. Is there a designated print area, or can you print the whole t-shirt with the brother?? I appreciate some of these questions are a bit "how long is a piece of string" but if you could do your best!!

Thanks

Dan

[John Cooper]

We’ve considered purchasing a DTG printer.

It’s the cost that put me off. Do the sums, you have to shift one hell of a lot of shirts in order to break even.

I guess some shops have enough passing traffic to get the orders.

When I saw the T-Jet being demo’d at a local venue, they were slow and the end result lost it’s sparkle after curing. I wasn’t overly impressed. This was printing to a dark shirt and had to lay down a white base first.

John

[Mark Ford]

Dan,

Print cost will vary due to size of print – eg left chest 5 – 15p, A4 size 25-60p and maybe upto £1.50 for full print area with heavy ink coverage.

Max print area is 14" x 16" and you can print over seams etc.

Typical print time is 30-60 seconds for a front chest print approx A4 in size and then 35 seconds on the heatpress, which you will do while the next shirt is printing. Average throughput with a single operator is 30-40 shirts per hour, an extra 10-15 with 2 operators.

Prints fade very gradually over a period of time I have found.

Learning curve is shallow, with your experience you will be in full production within hours. Load up your image into your preferred software with a document size of 14x 16", position image, click print as if your were printing to your desktop printer, and hit the print button on the Brother, once the next shirt is loaded, hit the print button again.

Mark

[Dan Osterbery]

Thanks guys! Very interesting! We do quite a few products and services and I think this machine could compliment the arsenal quite well, we have a four head embroidery machine so we have a lot of garment customers already, we have always subbed out screen printing, but this could offer an alternative! Menorca is a funny market as it is lots of small orders rather than long runs, hence us not buying our own screen printing set up, the numbers have never really been in our favor, but without screen costs and minimal set up costs (apart from purchase of machine) this could be an option. i will get some samples and wash them like crazy and see if they stand up ok.

cheers

Dan

[Saph-D]

Hi,

We have recently invested in a direct to garment printer – the GJet – and we are more than thrilled with it.

It has a single white pass which gives outstanding white results onto black tshirts ( we use high quality tees as the weave is better ) and the colours are really vivid.

You get full installation and training with it too which is not to be sneezed at ! Someone we know has the brother and has found it very restricting. We just kept an eye on the progress of the different inks and after a lot of thinking, bought the Gjet.

We’d decided that if we were going to get one then it had to be able to print cleanly and clearly onto black or coloured shirts. Not a decision we’ve regretted ! Cost wise it is approximately 10p for a white shirt and 60p for a colour shirt ( A3 )

http://www.directtogarmentprinting.co.uk has quite a bit of information on it.

Now we just have to wait for a garment supplier to start pre-coating the black ones for us

:lol1:

[Paul Humble]

Whats the price range of these machines?

[John Cooper]

Is it me or are most of the links on http://www.directtogarmentprinting.co.uk screwed up?

Price when I enquired last was £10,000 up! On top you have the cost of inks, treatment sprays etc.

I wanted the figures to ‘stack up’ to show it was a worthwhile investment for our business, but I just couldn’t make it work.

I’d welcome someone proving me wrong.

John

[Paul Humble]

quote John Cooper:

Price when I enquired last was £10,000 up! On top you have the cost of inks, treatment sprays etc.

I wanted the figures to ‘stack up’ to show it was a worthwhile investment for our business, but I just couldn’t make it work.

I’d welcome someone proving me wrong.

John

Thats too much for me at the moment. Id need to be 100% T Shirt Printing all the time to make it work.

[Dan Osterbery]

Hi All,
just got back from spanish sign show! Tested and have samples from four machines

1. MS one
2. Anajet
3. Texjet
4. Kiosk HM1

They all print onto black, they all need pre-treatment they ranged vastly in speed and loading techniques etc.

The quality and speed of the kiosk out shone the others dramatically, and if you are interested will go into details when I have done the wash tests.

Prices range from 10k (euros) to 15K (euros)

The only one that I would personally say was worth the money was the kiosk

[John Cooper]

This is the quotation I received today for the GJET DTG printer

The cost of the printer is £10,250.00 + VAT,

I’m not VAT registered and that price represents one hell of a lot of shirts!

John

[Paul Humble]

quote John Cooper:

This is the quotation I received today for the GJET DTG printer

The cost of the printer is £10,250.00 + VAT,

I’m not VAT registered and that price represents one hell of a lot of shirts!

John

They must only reply to questions once a week because I got the exact same email today.

Im not VAT registered either and just couldnt possibly justify paying 12 grand on a garment printer.

[Earl Smith]

You think that is expensive. Brother have just revealed their new printer for dark shirts. Ok it does 2 at the same time but the price is rumored to be around 38,000 Euros. 30,000pounds. Is that a joke or what?? http://www.inkjetgarmentprinters.com/fo … 158&t=4822

Earl

[Mark Ford]

Still cheaper than a 1 pallet Kornit at £55k or 2 pallet for £100k.

I think we paid about £13750.00 + VAT for our Brother and it more than pays for itself, although garment decoration is a major part of our business. I’ll be seriously considering trading it up to the white ink version.

Mark

[Neil Speirs]

quote Saph-D:

Hi,

We have recently invested in a direct to garment printer – the GJet – and we are more than thrilled with it.

It has a single white pass which gives outstanding white results onto black tshirts ( we use high quality tees as the weave is better ) and the colours are really vivid.

You get full installation and training with it too which is not to be sneezed at ! Someone we know has the brother and has found it very restricting. We just kept an eye on the progress of the different inks and after a lot of thinking, bought the Gjet.

We’d decided that if we were going to get one then it had to be able to print cleanly and clearly onto black or coloured shirts. Not a decision we’ve regretted ! Cost wise it is approximately 10p for a white shirt and 60p for a colour shirt ( A3 )

http://www.directtogarmentprinting.co.uk has quite a bit of information on it.

Now we just have to wait for a garment supplier to start pre-coating the black ones for us

:lol1:

Hi saph, how you getting on with your DTG six months down the line?

Is it working out time & cost effective for you & would you recommend getting one if another member was thinking of this type of set up?