Cheers John
Yeah you pretty much answered everything. I too have been looking at DTG and i found a chinese company through that t-shirt forum. Theirs was only 3k but it was marketed as a flatbed printer that can do DTG. I was willing to take a 3k gamble on it because a lot of my designs were white anyway, so even if there was a registration problem with colour overlay, at least i has a white printer for darks. Kinda loony i know but it wouldve saved a lot of time weeding intricate designs with vinyl.
Im surprised that they didnt have a heat press with them to cure the shirts when printed though! a little "suss" if you ask me but im sure theres a reason although if i was pushing a DTG i would make sure that expo customers could walk away with a finished garment to try out inthe wash. This is my concern and something that ive read about a lot. A few people in the U.S. went to the big show in Miami (i think!) and when they got their samples back and did the acid test, a lot were dissapointed with the amount of fade. Im familiar with the names you mentioned and these names were brought up at the t-shirt forum, but the yanks being yanks were being ultra picky and some were using calibration equipment to measure the colour loss! Ok i see their angle but does anything stay 100% fade proof? no! especialy when numptys boil their t-shirts coz mum aint washing them lol
Yup, du-pont are at the forefront of white inks and yes its all bottled with different names. I use Roland Eco-sol Max inks in my Versacamm, but upon ripping an old cart apart i see Epson with a very silly white sticker over it! Ok it might not be Epson ink (do they make ink?) but of course theres some rebranding going on somewhere. in defense of Epson, i do see that their carts for their machines are extremely similar to Rolands so perhaps its just the cart-build that theyre covering up - who knows?
Im also with you on the WIMS as well. After doing some geek-googling i found that white ink is in fact Titanium with a bonder mixed in and this is where the problem is, the titanium is the chief clogger of expensive heads, thus the bonder needs to be constantly mixed so that it fires well through the Epson heads. Yours has this constant mixing and i guess most of the price goes into this technology. The machine i was gonna get didnt have this which of course rang Big ben bells, i couldjust see it clog up or loads of head cleans to pull it through, which wastes way too much ink, and this white ink aint cheap.
I applaude you for getting this machine but i do think we're still a few years away from printers that we know now. And thats good! coz its stops tom, dick and harry getting in and undercutting the market. Perhaps we can charge just what the price should be and not 50p like on ebay! (no offense to ebayers...im one, but i charge proper prices for my work, im no mug - no self-pun intended lol)
I know its probably way to early to ask this, but have you thought of a trade price yet for full colour dark tee's? both chest logo and full frontal designs?
also, have you cured the samples you had? and washed them? its only nature that the full amount of colour wont stay on there because of the ruff and tumble of the washing machine and natural loss, but i really hope that they do keep at least 85-90% of their original colour.
Cheers John, all the best
Dave.
thank God!