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Direct to Garment => DTG - General => Topic started by: JeridHill on June 27, 2017, 09:41:24 AM
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Hey everyone, I've been watching these boards more lately and noticed there really isn't much activity in the DTG section. I've been in the DTG industry since 2004 and have subscribed to this section, so if anyone has questions or comments, I'd love to hear them. I'm looking forward to participating in building up this section!
*Full Disclosure* I work for a company that manufactures direct to garment equipment. If you look at my posts anywhere, you can see my intention isn't to push equipment, but rather to help grow the industry and my discussions here are meant to pursue that purpose.
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I am not knocking anybody here, but DTG isn't a huge thing with most of the folks here. We've been printing since about 2002-2003 and are only CMYK at this point after not doing a great job keeping our white ink flowing.
I would say this is also a screen printing forum first and foremost, and with some of the work I see here DTG is pointless for some of the guys.
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I can understand that but I've been told on more than one occasion that some people on this board are interested in DTG. I can understand why most on this board don't gravitate towards DTG. I've personally screen printed since 1998, so I understand the argument of being able to do it faster, cheaper etc. But the reality is, DTG is still a growing industry and can actually achieve faster results than four color process screen printing up to a certain quantity and with faster printers always being released, these numbers get blurred even more.
I'm simply making myself available if anyone would like to further the DTG discussion. Thanks for the input.
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I can't speak for everyone, but I continue to have a debate with myself on if DTG is worth it for our business. On one hand, I'd love to offer low minimums of full color images and even 1-2 color designs. On the other hand, clients that place low quantity orders are almost always, without a question, way more annoying and require too much hand holding. I understand you can charge a premium for DTG goods, but I'm still not convinced the time investment I'd have to spend with each client would work out to the hourly rate I'd want to make. I hope I'm wrong and I hope we can offer DTG in the future. For right now I think it's more important for our business to invest in screen printing equipment and to develop our embroidery department before jumping into DTG.
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Yeah, honestly I think DTG is suited well for one-off's, etc, but I think it's better if you choose the one-off's. In other words, if you have your own designs and sell what you want to sell, that's where it flows much better. I agree, when you add the customer to the equation, it can get gummed up. I know a company that sells white tees for $17 but they let the customer sit there with them as they design the shirt at no cost. I guess this is more of a loss leader in hopes of bigger business?
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Here you go. This inspired a poll.
http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php?topic=20619.0 (http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php?topic=20619.0)
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We use our brother GT541 as a loss leader. More than anything it takes a lot of stress out of certain jobs paired with PITA customers. You know the ones that want 50 large and up shirts but also one 2T for their new born. Well the 2T now goes to the DTG. We also use it for doing names on backs and a metric ton of golf flags that used to be embroidered. With the DTG we have been able to keep a lot of customers more happy and our stress levels down.
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I know the customer type! This is perfect for this type of customer. Before DTG, I had a contract customer who would order Youth Small all the way up to 3X and wanted one color screen as big as I could make it on the smallest shirt and use it for everyone. Needless to say, the smallest shirt had a very distorted image as I tried to stretch it to make as large of a graphic as possible since the customer didn't want to pay for more than one screen.
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We picked up a GT-541 used a couple of years ago from a customer that was upgrading to the white ink model, but had no luck finding anyone who wanted white shirts for their projects. And the black on light colored goods was really lacking. After getting really busy and ignoring it for a while, it turned to junk. We bought the parts and had a tech come out, one look at the machine and he told us to send the parts back for a refund, and to trash the printer. Not a positive experience, but we do accept responsibility for it. Frankly, they all sound like they need way too much babying, and I don't like most of the sample prints I've seen. That being said, I farm it out when needed to Air Conway, and they have the big Kornit. The last job I got back looked great and the customer was very happy with it. Picture a semi transparent US flag over woodgrain, it would have been a major bear on press. We just don't have the extra $300K hanging around... my take anyway, though I do see it gaining more and more...
Steve
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Since it's based on inkjet, it definitely needs used. If it sits for too long of a period of time with no or little use, the heads can dry out and that's where the issues begin. I am a little surprised though, the GT541 has been a pretty consistent workhorse for owners and the black ink is pretty good on that printer.
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I like the concept of DTG, but it doesn't make sense for our current business model. Mine is a shop where I'm the only full-time employee, and I learned early on the way to make this work was not to diversify too much. Do what I do as well as possible, and look for the customers who need that.
I was recently in a place that seemed ideal for DTG. Boutique art/clothing/lifestyle shop. The artist-owner-operator is in the store everyday, sells almost exclusively his own designs, which he prints on-premises on a CMYK Brother printer. He only has to stock blank goods (cheaper than selling name brands!), and he has full control over the color pallet, so he can dial in choices that work well without white. (Thus avoiding the headaches of white ink.) He can print only a few pieces at a time, so he has very little waste due to unpopular designs. And of course, he's selling every shirt at full retail, without having to pay someone else to print it.
DTG is something I continue to keep my eye on. It is changing, and I expect it will slowly become more practical in more situations. But thus far, for printers who deliver in bulk, it is still a very different animal than screening, not a viable alternative to screening. For people willing to diversify & have the right plan to make it profitable, great. For me, sticking to the squeegee [almost exclusively] still makes more sense.
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Yeah, DTG isn't for everyone. I no longer screen print, but when I did, I offered DTG, vinyl transfers, screen printing and embroidery. I tried to cover all the bases and when I added DTG, I was surprised at how quickly it grew. That being said, it was somewhat new technology when I added it to my shop, so the hype was growing.
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Mostly, we're glad we didn't pay full price for it. I think it's best for doing your own designs, where jerks don't pick it apart for not being dead on... "It doesn't look like it does on my monitor..." I think I'm just getting too old, and tired of people in general, LOL. We tried marketing it with Facebook and direct mailings, but all we really heard was "crickets". And of course, the day to day work that doesn't go DTG just took over our time, as it usually does, so the machine went untouched, and you know the rest.
Steve
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Yeah, I think one large issue this industry came across was the belief that DTG owners needed to educate the customer on the process. This sets a certain expectation that can be difficult to meet. I've seen some of the crappiest prints in screen printing sitting on a rack at major retail stores and people buy them without thinking, but add customization to it and you have a Michelangelo on your hands!
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Jerid, where do you see the decorating industry going? Do you think in 20 years everything will be done digitally? What bout 10?
Where is the cross over point now between analog and digital (when do you use which one of the processes)?
Where do you see digital going in the next 5-10 years? What will be the innovations brought to our industry?
pierre
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Jerid, where do you see the decorating industry going? Do you think in 20 years everything will be done digitally? What bout 10?
Where is the cross over point now between analog and digital (when do you use which one of the processes)?
Where do you see digital going in the next 5-10 years? What will be the innovations brought to our industry?
pierre
Most screen printers see DTG as merely filling the low run niche, thoiugh I still remember the day, six or seven years ago that Brother's rep, (the guy I remember as the "Man in Black") claimed competitive cost effectiveness on process jobs up to 400! I still don't believe it.
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Printing speeds are always increasing. I don't see totally doing away with screen printing, but I do think in the 20 year time frame, you will see a much greater divide between screen print shops and digital shops. Screen print shops most likely will be large volume and specialty printing like glitter, leather, puff, etc., whereas digital will be from small to large volume. Handling of garments is still always a factor in throughput but the with inks and chemistry being developed all the time to compensate, the printers themselves should be able to handle almost all types of fabrics. I do believe we will see no pretreat necessary and white ink systems more stable than ever.
In five years, I believe we will have a stable system to print on any type of fabric, 5-10 years, maybe the no pretreat technology. There is some now that is UV based, but there are a lot of people allergic to UV, so I'm not sure it's going to take off in it's current configuration and will need more time.
As for the technology itself, we are already seeing 30-40 dark garments an hour on the products we are developing and that's a small platform. So within the next 5 years, we should be able to at least double that with more advanced equipment, etc.
The industry has to be simplified for better stability to the person printing 10 shirts a week, to 1,000 a day. We've been heading that direction as an industry for quite some time and I believe we are there now, but I do think we need just a little more time for the confidence of the end user to be won back over.
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Oh and the threshold between when to DTG and when to screen print now should be based on 4 color process.
If I can print 30-40 dark garments an hour consistently (let's average it to 35), then how much time does it take you to do a four color process on a black shirt? It's really not four colors but more like 8-9 for a true quality print. So let's say it takes 2 hours for your film output and to make screens, another hour for taping and registration (this would be the average shop on an auto) then 1 hour to ink up and print say a gross of shirts then clean up. If this is the scenario, then you have 4 hours or an average of 36 shirts an hour. So on this particular printer, a gross looks about right. For our previous model, we'd only do about 18 dark garments an hour, so you could say 72.
Light garments are always a much different story. Four color process won't yield as good of a quality as DTG, but the more colors you throw at it, the better the print could be in screen printing. I would always use both. I had one customer that would come to me for the same type of order every time. 144 shirts, full color on the back, 1 color on the front. I would use DTG for the backs and screen print for the front. At the time, I was yielding probably 45 shirts an hour for DTG, whereas now, I can double that.
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We have owned a GT541 for at least 7 years now or so, we got into back when the TJET was all over the market and Brother was finally releasing a true built from the ground up machine. Back then I paid a lot of attention to where it was going always with the hope that white printers would get better, not require pre-treat and have screen print wash fastness. Fast forward to today, DTG is an after thought for me, I do not follow any of the tech anymore simply because in my opinion it has not changed. Sure print heads got a bigger and some machines can pretreat and print all in one but fundamentally it is still what it was almost a decade ago. With that in mind and absolutely nothing on the horizon that is game changing I do not see DTG having any more of an impact in apparel decorating than it does today in the near future (10+ years)
It honestly doesnt appeal to me that you can print 30 to 40 full color dark shirts an hour if it also requires a lot of maintenance and a lot of pre print prep. And the cost of break downs is scary, we already replaced some heads on our Brother and at over $1k a piece I fear having a white printing machine that accidentally got neglected to long and had to replace multiple heads.
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I understand your thoughts on it. I can tell you that we have been addressing the issues and concerns you have and it's the direction the industry has to go. On our newest equipment, we can push a button and in less than 1 minute, there is no longer any white ink in the head. This can also be automated that after x amount of days of no use, it can force this. We can even connect directly to the printer for any troubleshooting as well as we are building an on-board help system that someone can walk through whatever issue or whatever they are attempting to do, right on the printer. Our newest printer is built from ground up to be specifically DTG so there are quite a few self-maintenance features. I see where we are and what we are now releasing is setting that bar higher. It's why I believe in 10+ years, it will look more advanced than it is today. If you look at what's on the market, I'd agree that there hadn't been a lot of solutions or changes, but when one company brings those solutions to the table, others have to follow or the fade away. I'm not shouting the praises of what we are doing because I know it needs to still be proven over time, but again, it is the direction I see the industry going.
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DTG will not be able to remotely take over the industry until it can print on all garment types and print faster than a press over long periods, not just initially.
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I can print on 100% black polyester currently with new inks coming and some machines are rated just as fast as automated screen printing speeds. Even though we can do these things now, I am careful not to make wild claims that in 1 year we'll be here or there. It's going to take time to continue the development and solidify it as well as roll it out industry wide as standards.
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Can't wait to see that, cause I remember brother telling me we could print on any 100% cotton shirt and that wasn't even true. So 100% poly, thats gonna be a challenge I suspect, will you find this perfect garment for it and pull it off, probably. It needs to be able to print on any type of garment or at least the major ones and in any garment color with no discoloration to the garment.
I know all about the machines on press and how they are getting faster all the time and I still skeptical at this stage of those. Do I think it will get there? Some day. I think we are easily 5-10 years before that tech is as it should be and much longer before its even remotely common place. Remember many screen print shops are still running presses form the 90's. I still walk in shops that use no registration jigs, don't know what a CTS is, and have never even considered that LED's can be used for screen imagining.
Can you out run me on a small job? For sure. The trend in my shop isn't super small jobs. Not that we dont have some 24-36-48pc jobs, we do. But we often are doing jobs that are much larger.
We've been hearing DTG was gonna be huge huge huge for many years and so far its mostly just not in the context of volume of screen print.
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Well to be fair, silk screening has been around for over 1,000 years but only until the past 40 years has it really started to advance. ;)
I've been in DTG since before white ink and honestly, I was a bit of a skeptic prior to trying this ink. I personally did the tests and pulled an A4 black polyester shirt, which is a very open weave, and it printed better than on some 100% cotton shirts. Then we went for a better quality, tighter weave shirt and the results were truly jaw dropping. Tunnel cured, wash tested and metered before and after many washes. Let's just say, if it passes longevity testing on print heads, we are in the right direction as an industry. The only thing I don't like at this stage is you have to use a different pretreat for dark cotton, light cotton, dark polyester and light polyester. But it's the beginning of the technology and as it improves, I'm sure we'll see it evolve into simplicity.
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Hey I am a believer of DTG in context I am using it, but I think its a long way out from being any type of remote threat to how this industry prints garments. I have been wrong before.
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I don't believe next year, but in the 20 year time frame, I can see it.
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I started working with a shop that has multiple DTG machines at the beginning of the year (they bought me) and have been learning a lot about DTG while continuing to screen print. The technology ABSOLUTELY has a place in some shops, and ABSOLUTELY doesn't have a place in others. It is really great for certain types of jobs and certain types of clients. We do a lot of on demand order fulfillment and it would be impossible to do what we do for those clients and make money doing it without DTG. For a shop like Danny's I doubt DTG would make much sense, but for shops who service more retail clients vs wholesale already, or who do variable volume on demand stuff for wholesale folks (and those people can accept and embrace the limitations of the technology when it comes to shirt choices etc) it is a great tool to have available. That said, it will never replace screenprinting and really shouldnt be viewed as an either/or thing, but just another tool that fills a specific roll.
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I agree that it won't replace screen printing, I just think in time, there will be a greater divide between the two.
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For what it's worth, the poll to I linked earlier (http://www.theshirtboard.com/index.php/topic,20619.msg192117/topicseen.html#new) (8 hours ago) about services offered, still doesn't have one member who says that they also offer DTG. I know that ain't right!
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My 2 cents is that our dtg machine turned our catcher into an employee capable of generating $1000 per day gross. She can catch and run the machine at the same time.
The sweet spot for dtg is same as screen print, 12 pcs and up. We stopped doing under 12. Currently running 800 shirts for a cafe, 30 tees for a burger joint, 12 for someone's kid, 4x orders of 50 for a small label brand, 4x 25 for a cannabis dispensary. Ran 150 for 1 day turn for Atlantic records.
There's a market for it, and again, training is much lower to getting a revenue generating employee. I can teach someone in 1 hr how to run dtg, Maybe a month to run an auto
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I'm intrigued by the framing of four color process being the benchmark, but in screen printing that not being four color process, but instead sim process with 8-9 screens.
Do you feel four color process plus white somehow competes with the gamut of sim process on a quality scale?
To do what you're saying, wouldn't it have to?
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It's not true that there is no setup time in dtg because One of the biggest barriers for dtg is the inconsistency of reproduction across t-shirt brands / weights. So if you print the exact same color / brand / style all the time setup is minimal but not if you're printing multiple substrates which all of us are required to do.
I was doing hard proofs this morning and had an image on white tee that was bleeding. Dialed it in on a.scrap startee shirt. Ran it on a Bella 3001, and its back bleeding again. Dialed it in on the Bella after 2 more prints, the whole process took 30 min to run tests.
I also ran a different proof on gildan 64000 tee. Guessed correctly at how much more pretreat we would need, missed on the extra white and then dialed it in on the second try. since I like to make sure all variables are correct before handing over to production - pretreat, ink density, image - takes about 1/2 hr.
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Crickets chirping indeed. :)
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Sorry, holidays....
"I'm intrigued by the framing of four color process being the benchmark, but in screen printing that not being four color process, but instead sim process with 8-9 screens."
I agree with this and usually the discussion I have with people. You may be able to get away with four color process on a white shirt, but not black and of course 8-9 sim process will always produce a much better print.
"Do you feel four color process plus white somehow competes with the gamut of sim process on a quality scale?
To do what you're saying, wouldn't it have to?"
With DTG, even though it's four color process, the inks aren't pure 100% cyan, 100% magenta, 100% yellow or 100% black. They are tweaked to produce a better color gamut then couple that with using RGB as your image color file structure and the RIP can push the limits of typical CMYK printers.
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It's not true that there is no setup time in dtg because One of the biggest barriers for dtg is the inconsistency of reproduction across t-shirt brands / weights. So if you print the exact same color / brand / style all the time setup is minimal but not if you're printing multiple substrates which all of us are required to do.
It depends on your business. If you open up the possibilities to print on any type of garment because your customer dictates it, sure there's going to be quite a bit of testing and so forth. We don't advocate letting the customer pick. If your business model is structured that way, it may not be the best if you don't have time to test, etc.
I was doing hard proofs this morning and had an image on white tee that was bleeding. Dialed it in on a.scrap startee shirt. Ran it on a Bella 3001, and its back bleeding again. Dialed it in on the Bella after 2 more prints, the whole process took 30 min to run tests.
Obviously one style of shirt may print differently than another. When you have something dialed in for a particular shirt, some software will allow you to save presets so you don't have to try to figure it out every time. That being said, there really are only a few categories of shirt styles that all print about the same within that category. It's definitely a trial and error process. For the most part, if I have a shirt in hand I've never tested, I can tell what settings should work best. But this shouldn't be on an every job basis.
I also ran a different proof on gildan 64000 tee. Guessed correctly at how much more pretreat we would need, missed on the extra white and then dialed it in on the second try. since I like to make sure all variables are correct before handing over to production - pretreat, ink density, image - takes about 1/2 hr.
Not much to say other than it's the same scenario as above.
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We still print more jobs CMYK on press than we do on the DTG. It does not take long at all to process 4 films and shoot the screens versus the extremely long time it takes to print on a DTG compared to on press.
I can also print better colors on the press than the DTG can with extra colors on top of the cmyk. Ever see how well Brothers inks make purple?
Still tho I lost interest i9n the process a long time ago, it just is not advancing in any way noticeable. A lot of the things you mention are nothing more than polishing up already existing processes.
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A lot of the things you mention are nothing more than polishing up already existing processes.
New ink chemistry is coming out all the time with better advancements. That's where the focus has to be now that the printers have improved throughout the years. As for Brother, they don't use a RIP software and the reason for the need to adjust colors in your artwork or you get unwanted colors on your prints.
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I agree with this and usually the discussion I have with people. You may be able to get away with four color process on a white shirt, but not black and of course 8-9 sim process will always produce a much better print.
With DTG, even though it's four color process, the inks aren't pure 100% cyan, 100% magenta, 100% yellow or 100% black. They are tweaked to produce a better color gamut then couple that with using RGB as your image color file structure and the RIP can push the limits of typical CMYK printers.
Interesting.
I'm guessing on darks you can increase the saturation without worrying about total ink deposit, which would be neat.
But by the same token, no bumps for that saturated red, violet, or royal.
And speaking of extending gamut, what kinds of colors on white can you hit on a DTG that I can't with 4CP?
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It's not true that there is no setup time in dtg because One of the biggest barriers for dtg is the inconsistency of reproduction across t-shirt brands / weights. So if you print the exact same color / brand / style all the time setup is minimal but not if you're printing multiple substrates which all of us are required to do.
It depends on your business. If you open up the possibilities to print on any type of garment because your customer dictates it, sure there's going to be quite a bit of testing and so forth. We don't advocate letting the customer pick. If your business model is structured that way, it may not be the best if you don't have time to test, etc.
Not sure what world you live in but OK. Ultimately the customer wants what they want - if you won't sell it to them someone else will. Customers these days want choice man.
We do contract print work and custom print work. For the contract stuff the job is already decided and sold before I get my hands on it. For the custom stuff we try to steer the customer into a product that will print well.
I was doing hard proofs this morning and had an image on white tee that was bleeding. Dialed it in on a.scrap startee shirt. Ran it on a Bella 3001, and its back bleeding again. Dialed it in on the Bella after 2 more prints, the whole process took 30 min to run tests.
Obviously one style of shirt may print differently than another. When you have something dialed in for a particular shirt, some software will allow you to save presets so you don't have to try to figure it out every time. That being said, there really are only a few categories of shirt styles that all print about the same within that category. It's definitely a trial and error process. For the most part, if I have a shirt in hand I've never tested, I can tell what settings should work best. But this shouldn't be on an every job basis.
IMO the lack of predictability is a barrier the technology will need to get over in order to really make it big time. Screen printing press is superior to DTG in terms of predicability.
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Agreed on this. Almost impossible to steer customers into what you want to print/image. Only exception I've run into is if they insist on discharge. Then we have the upper hand
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And speaking of extending gamut, what kinds of colors on white can you hit on a DTG that I can't with 4CP?
Mainly vibrant (almost) fluorescent like colors, they are tough but it can be done. But it's really more about the gradients and smoothness of print versus halftones.
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Not sure what world you live in but OK. Ultimately the customer wants what they want - if you won't sell it to them someone else will. Customers these days want choice man.
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. You still give the customer a choice, but you choose which shirts they can pick from. And when they absolutely have to have the shirt they want, then you print on it and print on a good shirt and show them the difference and let them decide at that point. It's all about selling the customer what works best for you and gives them a great product. You allow them to choose any crappy shirt and your reputation is on the line. If your business model wouldn't allow for this kind of choice, then DTG isn't right for your business.
We do contract print work and custom print work. For the contract stuff the job is already decided and sold before I get my hands on it. For the custom stuff we try to steer the customer into a product that will print well.
If you have absolutely no say in the matter, that's more understandable, but the principal works the same for this type of customer as well. If they choose a shirt that you know won't print well, you have to let them know this before the next order, otherwise, personally I would not guarantee any results.
IMO the lack of predictability is a barrier the technology will need to get over in order to really make it big time. Screen printing press is superior to DTG in terms of predicability.
I can't argue with this, I agree. I screen printed for 13 years but I will say that I had to learn the predictability as well. Different meshes, pressures, angles of squeegees, coating techniques, types of inks for different substrates, etc, etc. Once you understand these things it is predictable. DTG isn't there yet and a lot of it has to do with the shirt manufacturers themselves. For example, I can print on a Gildan shirt made in Honduras and one made in Nicaragua and they will look different, so as a general rule, I stay away from Gildan. But I've personally talked to 3 major brands and they are all working on trying to make better shirts for the DTG industry.
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I can't argue with this, I agree. I screen printed for 13 years but I will say that I had to learn the predictability as well. Different meshes, pressures, angles of squeegees, coating techniques, types of inks for different substrates, etc, etc. Once you understand these things it is predictable. DTG isn't there yet and a lot of it has to do with the shirt manufacturers themselves. For example, I can print on a Gildan shirt made in Honduras and one made in Nicaragua and they will look different, so as a general rule, I stay away from Gildan. But I've personally talked to 3 major brands and they are all working on trying to make better shirts for the DTG industry.
I have found this to be true with every brand we have tried. We typically print on Canvas 3001 (C or U depending on the client). The ones made in Bangladesh print the best, followed by Nicaragua and US made which print fine most of the time but require a bit more pretreat, and the ones in Honduras vary from shirt to shirt out of the same dozen from the same case. Some will print like absolute crap, some are perfect. All variables the same minus the shirt. We have had mixed luck on next level, though some of their shirt colors do not stain where the Canvas version of those colors do (light blues, purples, pinks) so we use NL for those shades. American Apparel prints like crap with dupont inks, but we tried a few other ink brands that worked well on those shirts but sucked on the Canvas and Next Level and had other issues that ultimately led us back to dupont.
I still think it makes no sense for anyone to compare screen printing and DTG in a way where one replaces the other. They are inherently different methods which have little crossover. On demand, small runs, etc, DTG is already the much better tool, but for almost everything else it isnt going to replace screenprinting for a very long time. It would basically require a printhead printing with screenprinting inks (like actual mixed pantones etc) at 1000 shirts an hour and minimal maintenance.
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I still think it makes no sense for anyone to compare screen printing and DTG in a way where one replaces the other. They are inherently different methods which have little crossover. On demand, small runs, etc, DTG is already the much better tool, but for almost everything else it isnt going to replace screenprinting for a very long time. It would basically require a printhead printing with screenprinting inks (like actual mixed pantones etc) at 1000 shirts an hour and minimal maintenance.
If I came across that way, it wasn't my intention. I agree with this as well. I don't think it's any time soon, but in 20 years time, I could see it happen. Not a complete replacement but screen printing could become more specialized.
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I still think it makes no sense for anyone to compare screen printing and DTG in a way where one replaces the other. They are inherently different methods which have little crossover. On demand, small runs, etc, DTG is already the much better tool, but for almost everything else it isnt going to replace screenprinting for a very long time. It would basically require a printhead printing with screenprinting inks (like actual mixed pantones etc) at 1000 shirts an hour and minimal maintenance.
If I came across that way, it wasn't my intention. I agree with this as well. I don't think it's any time soon, but in 20 years time, I could see it happen. Not a complete replacement but screen printing could become more specialized.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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