Crickets Chirping.....

[JeridHill]

Even if in 20 years time this magic happens.... the adoption of new tech is SUPER slow in this industry. I can't tell you how many shops ive been in with presses from the 80's and 90's. Its sad.

I can agree to a certain extent. I don't think the screen printing industry felt the need to advance quickly. The DTG industry has to. Also, me being on the inside, I understand the need and also see what we as a company are personally doing to change it. It's advanced incredibly in the last 10 years and I don't see the advancement stopping. But again, I imagine I'm a little biased being on the inside looking out.

[GraphicDisorder]

Even if in 20 years time this magic happens.... the adoption of new tech is SUPER slow in this industry. I can't tell you how many shops ive been in with presses from the 80's and 90's. Its sad.

I can agree to a certain extent. I don't think the screen printing industry felt the need to advance quickly. The DTG industry has to. Also, me being on the inside, I understand the need and also see what we as a company are personally doing to change it. It's advanced incredibly in the last 10 years and I don't see the advancement stopping. But again, I imagine I'm a little biased being on the inside looking out.

10 years ago it was a full joke no matter what any one says. 20- years it might be something shops will have as common as say a heat press.... but even then I think you wont live long enough to see DTG take over the garment market.

[JeridHill]

10 years ago it was a full joke no matter what any one says. 20- years it might be something shops will have as common as say a heat press.... but even then I think you wont live long enough to see DTG take over the garment market.

Maybe it's a discussion on a forum, but again, I'm in agreement, I don't think DTG will take over the market, I just believe there will be a greater divide of who uses DTG vs who screen prints. I don't believe it will ever do away with screen printing, but I do think it will have come so far that it's easier to use and less of a learning curve than screen printing. I guess only time will tell.

[Prosperi-Tees]

I think the entry price needs to come down. An all in setup is what 30-40k for a decent machine and all the peripherals?

[JeridHill]

We have $6,000 in print heads alone in our newest printer. It makes it difficult to get the price down with costs like this. We have several million in R&D which makes it difficult to sell for less than what we are which is reasonable at $28k. Eventually pricing will come down for higher producing printers, but we are literally competing in speed and quality with low to mid 6 figure prices. So in that sense, pricing is getting lower for industrial printers.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Yes I get it. I'm just a cheap bastard lol. The depreciation on machines is pretty insane though some saving up to 50% of new but it's used and we know what can come of that.

[Frog]

Yes I get it. I'm just a cheap bastard lol. The depreciation on machines is pretty insane though some saving up to 50% of new but it's used and we know what can come of that.

Some of those bargains could well come from folks new to the biz whose visions of easy income didn't materialize, and they need the cash back. Of course, you also have to hope that those folks performed regular maintenance.

[Prosperi-Tees]

Yes exactly frog man. I wonder if there are any unbiased tests of costs of operating/maintaining the most popular brands of dtg  printers out there anywhere. My guess is no, but would be very helpful.

[JeridHill]

Yes exactly frog man. I wonder if there are any unbiased tests of costs of operating/maintaining the most popular brands of dtg  printers out there anywhere. My guess is no, but would be very helpful.

We always give full disclosure on operating costs and I’m sure there are others who do as well. On the Mod1 a simple clean is $0.26, a heavy clean is $2.76 and if you want to flush white ink out of the system, it’s $7.00. Depending on your usage, your operational costs will vary. I don’t have numbers for our new printer yet since we are still fine tuning our automated procedures.

[merchmonster]

In DTG you don't hand a customer a source book for shirts and say pick anything you want, it just cannot work that way. So you pick shirts that work well but have a variety and let the customer choose from that. I know you say the customer wants what they want, but you wouldn't print on 100% polyester, it's simply not an option, so why offer garments that don't print well in the 100% cotton category.

We sell both screen print and DTG, with DTG making up around 10-20% of our gross sales. It's growing though. So we have to sell shirts like Gildan 5000.

Additionally I have 2 CSRs and it is a major training issue to tell them and reinforce that we only DTG these specific brands of shirts. Then check every invoice to make sure they only sell the tess I told them work with DTG. What a pain, its too much information to retain and check.

We don't do anything blatantly stupid like DTG on poly garments. But DTG on AAA 1301 is kind of a nightmare. Also DTG is well supplemented by a print and cut machine to round out the full color offering.

[merchmonster]

I think the entry price needs to come down. An all in setup is what 30-40k for a decent machine and all the peripherals?

$21k for the epson, heat press, and pretreater.

[JeridHill]

Additionally I have 2 CSRs and it is a major training issue to tell them and reinforce that we only DTG these specific brands of shirts. Then check every invoice to make sure they only sell the tess I told them work with DTG. What a pain, its too much information to retain and check.

In fairness, personnel are usually the most problematic equation of any business.

Also DTG is well supplemented by a print and cut machine to round out the full color offering.

I agree this is a good offering. Print and cut has its place and with the right material, you can achieve a really good print on any fabric.

[Sbrem]

Even if in 20 years time this magic happens.... the adoption of new tech is SUPER slow in this industry. I can't tell you how many shops ive been in with presses from the 80's and 90's. Its sad.

I can agree to a certain extent. I don't think the screen printing industry felt the need to advance quickly. The DTG industry has to. Also, me being on the inside, I understand the need and also see what we as a company are personally doing to change it. It's advanced incredibly in the last 10 years and I don't see the advancement stopping. But again, I imagine I'm a little biased being on the inside looking out.

10 years ago it was a full joke no matter what any one says. 20- years it might be something shops will have as common as say a heat press.... but even then I think you wont live long enough to see DTG take over the garment market.

That's about the time I saw my first sample from a Kornit; it was dreadful, a piss poor performance from beginning to end. That being said, I have to believe it was operator error; a crappy jpeg, blurry, black ink bleeding horribly into yellow (reminded me of the '70's and stapled mesh that wouldn't register on a tension meter). I couldn't believe they were showing that around. The quality has improved a lot. I send my few DTG jobs to someone with the biggest and fastest, and they have their R & D down, so I know I can trust it. No, it does not look like screen printing, but the average person wouldn't know, a pearls before swine kind of thing. Teaching customers about it can be a big deal though, they squint one eye and turn their heads a little, LOL

Steve