Dtg Printers Vs Screen Printing

I had the dtg and did screen printing. While the dtg is nice to stick a shirt and get a full color tee out of it if you dont plan on using all the time don't buy one. Also the white is a pain in the A@#. The screen printing has more steps but the dtg is just as time consuming maintaining the machine. Cost comparison there is no competition screen printing win hands down. Maybe in a few years when the DTGs come along a little bit better but for now they are nothing more than an overpriced epson printer running textile ink through it. Print head clogging and maintenance are the norm. They have a lot of potential but just not there yet.

Traditional screen printing often requires expensive setup fees and often restrictive minimum orders. The more colors you want printed the more fees you pay due to the cost involved in setting up special screens. Each color represents a screen, and each screen represents more money paid toward your order. DTGprinting is the new model for fulfillment t-shirt printing houses that work with artists and individuals just like you. So what are you waiting for? Check out some of our designs, or create some of your own.

Thought about a DTG Printer a while back. After a long time researching and speaking with various businesses that had them and sales reps selling them our decision was not to go that route. Our reasons were such:

1) Unless you run the printer daily the cost would outweigh the sales. We figured that to pay for it we would like to have done 30 to 45 shirts/items a day.

2) At the time white ink was the latest and greatest but the downfall then and still now is that the ink is made with titanium dioxide that has a bad habit of settling out of solution not only in the ink tanks but in the delivery lines and the print head. Unless you perform a head cleaning, line cleaning each time you close up shop you set yourself up for a clogged print head. This can run anywhere from running a clean cycle to a print head replacement that can run upwards of $400 on up. Cleaning solution also runs up your costs and it is required to clean your lines and print heads.

3) With the cost of setting up a DTG Printer, ink supplies, cleaning solvents, time, cost of the printer itself and a quality heat press we decided that screen printing was much more in line with our budget. Heck the GT-541 itself was $24,000 plus shipping and setup charges. That will get you a premier screen print setup.

4) DTG Printing is not designed for high volume runs, ink costs compared to screen printing are very high and time per shirt/item is much higher.

DTG Printing has a valuable market but doesn't replace or compare with screen printing for volume. Screen printing likewise cannot compare to the detail obtainable with DTG Printing.

Hope this helps your knowledge base in your decision. Check out the web, ask around. :cool: