General Press Size - Thoughts on Future

[Alex M]

They can use any garment on the Hybrid (dtg) auto's now, just need the correct base/blocker. Only thing is the cost to get in... the combo sits between the 325-450k mark (press, hybrid dtg, flash's, etc) If you have a new enough press the hybrid alone is around 150-250k depending on speed needed. (150-400pcs per hour).

[brandon]

They can use any garment on the Hybrid (dtg) auto's now, just need the correct base/blocker. Only thing is the cost to get in... the combo sits between the 325-450k mark (press, hybrid dtg, flash's, etc) If you have a new enough press the hybrid alone is around 150-250k depending on speed needed. (150-400pcs per hour).

I hope that in about 10 years someone will have a press that is around 8 heads with the DTG built in (or comes with as a standard feature) for around 100 - 120K. I think it could solve a lot of problems to free up your "standard" press to bust out large orders. At least for small to medium sized shops.

[blue moon]

They can use any garment on the Hybrid (dtg) auto's now, just need the correct base/blocker. Only thing is the cost to get in... the combo sits between the 325-450k mark (press, hybrid dtg, flash's, etc) If you have a new enough press the hybrid alone is around 150-250k depending on speed needed. (150-400pcs per hour).

I hope that in about 10 years someone will have a press that is around 8 heads with the DTG built in (or comes with as a standard feature) for around 100 - 120K. I think it could solve a lot of problems to free up your "standard" press to bust out large orders. At least for small to medium sized shops.

in that price range you will probably just buy a stand alone DTG that prints 300/hour and has a significantly smaller footprint than an auto. Hybrids will be specialty item similar to AOP now. It makes no sense to burn a screen and have to register it (time consuming) to print the ubase if you can do it inside the DTG with a lot less headache.

Think about it this way, if doing 72 shirts, it will probably go on a standalone DTG. If doing 500, screenprinting will be cheaper and faster. For some, it might be as low as 288. For those of us that are fine doing sim process, anything above 144 should be screenprinted. So now you are talking about spending $120K to print orders between 72-144 that have very high color counts or need SFX-low qty-high color count. This is a very small subset of orders.

On very large orders auto will always be faster and cheaper due to limitations of the technology (which with time will become specialty equipment as the orders are getting smaller and smaller). A DTG could be designed to use a carousel style loading which will eliminate a major speed bottleneck. Next issue is the cost of ink (plastisol is cheaper to produce than super fine particle, filtered DTG ink). Additionally the ink deposit with DTG is super thin and is not as durable as layers of PVC.

Kornit already stopped making the hybrids. The writing is on the wall. . .

pierre

[mimosatexas]

There was that video posted recently of dream junction or something loadin their dtg on a carousel. I could see a press with loading, then pretreat spray in head one, then something like the hot iron (on maybe a couple heads in a row for speed reasons), then cooldowns, then the DTG head, or you could have wet pretreat like kornit. The thing is, loading/unloading doesnt take very long so The bottleneck is still the printing. The dual platen setups you see on some machines os already as efficient as you need with less footprint.

[brandon]

Good input. Thanks Pierre, that does make sense. A stand alone DTG machine with two platens at that point should be able to handle 300 pieces an hour give or take a little. In 10 years or less I'm sure we will see some units getting very fast. Then at that point why have DTG on a hybrid auto unit. This is why I was making the post, to see what others are thinking. I'm not going anywhere and am curious to see what others are planning for down the road. The more things change the more they stay the same.

[Maxie]

As Kitson says, my 2 cents.
One thing none of us can predict is where the DTG will be in 5, 10, 15 years.
At the moment they are slow for the price but they will surely speed up as new heads, inks and technology are introduced.
At the moment it's still a matter of cost.
The people who have online businesses (or possibly in big cities) where the volume is high and they have spent a lot of time building a stream lined, automated system for handling orders and specialize in small quantities at high prices can make stand alone units pay.
The printers that were designed for fitting into a carousel are not that practical at the moment.      The idea was that you could print digital with screen, and could have a large screen print with a smaller area printed digitally.
(I have a Kornit Paradigm and they have discontinued this model).      All the units I have seen have the same problems:
1 You have to print the base, on light garments applying the pre treatment via a screen works well but none of the units I saw (I was at the last L Beach ISS) have a good base for printing on dark garments, at the Roq booth they were spraying water onto the screen to try and keep it open).      By the way DTG works really well with a discharged base.
2 They are very slow compared to traditional printing, the Kornit Paradigm prints a letter sized image at about 2 a minute.    The heads are narrow so the printer has to make a few passes to print a large image.
3 Inks need long curing times so you need to run your oven at a slow speed.
4 Registering the base if you use a white base isn't easy.      I've thought of making two files, one with registration marks for setting up the base.
I think we might see a carousel in the future that prints only digitally, you could have a head for white, another for discharge or the pre treatment.     A flash and then a head for each color, the heads will most probably be wide so you only need to make one pass to cover the print area.    The digital heads will have their own station.   After the digital heads you could print traditional screen, puff, glue for flock or gold or whatever.        Problem right now is that with the technology we have this would be so expensive nobody would buy it.
In Israel they are developing printers that can print food.       The sky's the limit when it comes to technological advances and I would guess that it's just a matter of time until silk screen printing as we know it today is history.
How long, that's anyone's guess.    How many of us have film camera's collecting dust.