Let's talk about the Aeoon DTG.

[kingscreen]

Anyone have one?  What is the starting price?

https://screenprintsupply.com/dtg-printers/aeoon/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm5FioZmUs8

[blue moon]

$280K was the last number I heard and I think that was a show special. Nazdar sells them now so it should not be hard to get a price. . .

pierre

[Frog]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around All American Manufacturing and Supply touting this Austrian gem!

[GraphicDisorder]

Better be doing a ton of DTG to justify that one. Not as fast as I would have guessed for that price tag either. Is that even as fast as a Mlink X?

I like that load system though with the hold down around the garment. IMO that is something the Mlink needs.

[TCT]

That thing has been around for YEARS. Was at trade shows and I can remember 3 different occasions there was a "issue" and it didn't run. From what I understood at the time I followed it, All American got in over their head, needed a lot of coin to bring to market in the capacity that it was being advertised.

Then there was the issues of ownership back in Austria. Had something to do with the owners that got Digitek after MHM went into receivership, funds couldn't keep alive 2 concept undertakings or something. Again, this is years ago I paid attention to this so it is a bit foggy now.

When the first versions of it were coming out it was using Keocera print heads, that were stupid fast and printed a shirt in like 2 passes. Really had a lot of promise it seemed. It was before everyone else came out with the big Ricoh print head setups, and Kornit was still multiple pass machines. 

"IF" I was looking at that machine I would :
1) Grill Nazdar like a mo-fo.
2) Get a good feeling for the manufacturer and if they are on solid ground.     
3) Pre treat info

Would be cool if you shared what you find out!

[kingscreen]

At $280k, how does anyone justify that?

[Frog]

At $280k, how does anyone justify that?

With a well developed market for high volume of DTG shirts. ROI must be relative to the particular business model's income.
An Amazon, or Zazzle, or in-house Custom Ink can probably handle this.

[Nation03]

I'd like to see what kind of setup you need to actually pretreat, print and cure 800 shirts per hour on that.

[zanegun08]

Check out the Kornit Vulcan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pYv2To0co

Don't know cost but the pretreat and constant workflow is really cool for DTG as well as of all the DTG prints I've seen Kornit is usually the highest quality.

But in my opinion if you are that high volume it would be better to have a small army of Brother or small machines for the same cost as one of these bad boys.  Then if one goes down you are still running.

[Frog]

Check out the Kornit Vulcan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_pYv2To0co

Don't know cost but the pretreat and constant workflow is really cool for DTG as well as of all the DTG prints I've seen Kornit is usually the highest quality.

But in my opinion if you are that high volume it would be better to have a small army of Brother or small machines for the same cost as one of these bad boys.  Then if one goes down you are still running.

But one would have to pay the soldiers to keep this "army" moving. What would that cost? Someone needs to present some real comparative figures.

[kingscreen]

An Amazon, or Zazzle, or in-house Custom Ink can probably handle this.

I think that somewhat solidifies my opinion.  You have to be huge already to justify it.
Ordering would have to be automated, and shirts pre-pretreated.   

I have very little DTG knowledge, but couldn't you pretreat cases of shirts for use later?
Or does the chemistry require it to be freshly pre-treated?

[Nation03]

I'm fairly certain you can pretreat weeks in advance, but you may need to hit those shirts with the heat press one more time right before printing.

[Maxie]

I don't think you can compare a few Brothers to a Kornit, any Kornit.
The Kornit was designed from scratch to be a digital printer, i don't think there is anything on the market that comes close to it in terms of quality.
It's like comparing a Mercedes to a Subaru.

[zanegun08]

I don't think you can compare a few Brothers to a Kornit, any Kornit.
The Kornit was designed from scratch to be a digital printer, i don't think there is anything on the market that comes close to it in terms of quality.
It's like comparing a Mercedes to a Subaru.

I disagree, I'd say to the general person buying DTG shirts (ie. Custom Ink) they wouldn't really know the difference between the end product on either machine.

Also, the comparison is that when your one Mercedes is broken down, it is expensive to fix, and how many techs are in the field for Kornits in the US, as well as your few Subaru's, one breaks down and you have backups that keep production running.

As Frog said, you would have to worry about labor of running multiple DTG printers, but I think one operator could run a few machines at a time as they take a few minutes to print a tee.

Custom Ink uses brother printers, I'm pretty Zazzle, the Printful and other DTG companies all run more small machines, I'm not really sure the target market of Kornit printers, there is a person in Portland that area that has one but they aren't that great of operators so their print quality is not that great even with the Kornit Storm.

I would however love to have a Vulcan, but my target customer we would never see a profit from the machine until they come down in cost.  Sell me a Vulcan for 80k and I'm there.

[Rockers]

I don't think you can compare a few Brothers to a Kornit, any Kornit.
The Kornit was designed from scratch to be a digital printer, i don't think there is anything on the market that comes close to it in terms of quality.
It's like comparing a Mercedes to a Subaru.

Subaru has released some really nice new models here over the last couple of years.