Have you ever used a Direct to Garment T-shirt printer?

[Lynn Wang]

hi
looking for a direct T shirt printer.

where I can research?
which brand ., price range, ink etc..

I am attending printwear textile printing show at the end of this month in NEC

any suppliers in there?
thanks

printwearandpromotionlive.co.uk

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[Chris Wilson]

We do a fair bit of garments but never took the punt until now/near future with a brother GTX.
It’s all been rapidly improving.
There are others but there not cheap new.

Old machines on eBay etc.. there dirt cheap for a reason. White ink was a big problem. Lots of cleaning cycles, blocking etc..

Epson do machines but these are ship and drop packages. Not any training really. Machine wise though they are good. Ink is slightly more expensive than brother if I remember rightly as it’s smaller carts.

You’ll also need some way of pre-treating the garment first and a heat press.

Never been to the textile show but I would these are the main fancy kit these days so I would imagine there is a few there for various players.

You can pick up the brother GT 381’s on eBay now for around 6K but you would be taking a bit of a punt. I would set aside money for repairs on top of this.

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[Denise Goodfellow]

We’ve had 2, both good brands. Dtg and resolute. If I’m honest spending £10k on machines and other bits, you’ll need to do about 25 shirts every week for a year to get your money back, based on £9 profit per shirt..

I would say they are great if you have a clothing line, with great designs, where the customer picks a design then picks a garnet to put it on. You simply get that garment out of stock ( opps that’s another thing to think about) and then print it.

You’ve got to have a range of stock clothing, as you can’t justify ordering small numbers from stockists imo.

Printing a shirt for little Jenny’s birthday etc, ant going to cut it, unless you aren’t bothered too much about numbers.

Head strikes will cost you £600-£800 if you call the engineer out. Again something to think about.

Print ware and promotion is the place to go, Resolute have some new printers just come out, which seem popular. They have a fb page

[Lynn Wang]

thanks for the replying ,
thinking epson dtg printer.

do you use oem ink or 3rd party ink?

is there any ink supplier comes with warranty?

thanks

[Robert Lambie]

Just reading this thread, some good advice there Denise!

I love the DTG machines and what they are capable of doing, same applies for the small UV desktop printers like the Mimaki one… but for the investment, you really need to have an existing customer base to keep it going or you need to be focused on how you will sell it. The way garment printing is going, It makes me wonder with the ease of ordering via online sources with design apps for your website and mobile. sending unbranded parcels with your goods direct to your customer whilst giving you a commission is a route that should be considered!.

[Denise Goodfellow]

quote Lynn Wang:

thanks for the replying ,
thinking epson dtg printer.

do you use oem ink or 3rd party ink?

is there any ink supplier comes with warranty?

thanks

I’m pretty sure Resolute have done a deal with an ink manufacturer to produce ink in the UK, so perhaps ask them.

Epsom of course might.

But what warranty do you refer To?

With Dtg there are so many steps you need to correct in order to produce a long lasting t shirt. Mess up on the pretreatment and drying and it’s all over.