older Neoflex DTG

[Sbrem]

I have a customer who retired last year, who has a Neoflex DTG that she wants to let go of at a ridiculously low price. So, does anyone here have any input at all on the brand? It has sat for a while, but I'm willing to put the work in on it, if it's at all feasible. She just wants it out of her home, and there is a pre-treat machine as well. I've plenty of reading on DTG over the last few years, and I'm aware that they can be a major PITA, but for this price, if salvageable, might be a good pickup. Fire away...

Steve

[mimosatexas]

we ran two of these as our primary DTG machines for years.  You can get great prints out of them on lights and darks, but they have epson 4880 heads, which really dont like DTG ink.  You have to maintain the crap out of them (think 30 minutes to an hour EVERY DAY), and powerclean A LOT.  Ink isnt cheap, you waste a lot of it, and you will need the rip that lets you 8 pass (an option they removed at some point because the company that actually made the rip for Neoflex is idiotic).  Without the 8 pass option you will end up with banding in certain colors on any solid areas.  There are some really cool things about the machine though, like being able to print 16x42 (or something close to that), and loading while it prints allows you to go pretty freaking fast compared to most cheapo DTGs.  The way the bed works allows for a ton of clearance as well, so you can make jigs and print on all kinds of weird stuff beyond just shirts.

My suggestion: if its free or close to free, get it.  if it needs a new head, grab one out of a used 4880.  put double cmyk and get a feel for the machine, then add in the whites if needed.  Be prepared to do a lot of maintenance if you dont use it throughout the day every day.

[Sbrem]

Thanks, I did a ton of reading on these at TSF, and decided against it, even though it's so damn cheap. We just can't take the time to do that much maintenance on a 7 year old machine. For now, we'll sub out, AIR Conway has always done a good job for us. We can get it for a lot less than she would sell to others, but I really don't want to deal with that much fuss, when we don't have the customers for it. This is pretty much what happened when we bought a used Brother GT-541 from one of our customers who had upgraded to a white machine. We had some luck, but then nothing came in for it, it sat, and turned to stone, not even worth the repairs according to the local Brother Tech. I heard since from another former Brother tech, who said that wasn't necessarily so, but it's gone so, moot point there. You know, $2K is dirt, as there are a lot of extra parts, including a Viper Pretreater, but moving it all and going over it all is just too much of a time suck. Have a great day.

Steve