# One Month with the Easy T Printer



## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

It's been exactly one month since we received our Easy T Printer (directly from the manufacturer). I promised to follow-up with some of my thoughts after beating on it for 4 weeks, so here it goes...

You can read some of my initial thoughts on the printer in these two threads: here and here.

*Things to remember*
This is an $8000 printer. This is not a $25,000 printer. This is not a $300,000 printer. This $8000 printer includes a RIP, not a free print driver. This $8000 printer is assembled in the United States, not in Taiwan. This $8000 printer is built by a small manufacturer with just a few employees -- they all speak English, too. I'll repeat it again: this is an $8000 printer.

*Build Quality*
The overall build quality of the housing that holds the Epson printer is decent. I think over time it will only get better. Our serial number on our unit is under #30, so I assume we're still early guinea pigs. I've told Andy from Easy T about our minor problems and he fixed them promptly, at his cost.

*Customer Service*
We've emailed Andy at Easy T about 10 times in 4 weeks. 6 of those times he responded the same day. 3 of them he responded the next day. 1 of them it was 2 days. Half of our emails were at night or on a weekend and he still responded quickly.

Andy has never responded with confusing directions, but he has responded curtly -- he expects to work with professionals and if you're a true beginner, you'll definitely need to let him know. My people are professionals, so we're used to this kind of service response.

*Warranty*
We had one minor "failure" that was attributed to shipping when the printer arrived. Andy overnighted us the repair part and called us incessantly asking us if we needed help. We fixed it ourselves, but his follow up was awesome. I almost wish he wouldn't be so good at following up.

*Performance*
Printing on white/light shirts is fantastic, but it was a long uphill climb figuring it all out. We were brand new to DTG, so it's just part of the training. I would assume that someone new to both DTG AND T-shirt printing is going to go insane. This has nothing to do with Easy T -- it's just that DTG isn't as easy as printing on paper on your home printer.

We've tested dozens of shirts to get great settings. Every different shirt manufacturer and style needs different settings. That's part of the industry and technology.

Printing on dark/black shirts has been more problematic, but that's not an Easy T issue, it's again the technology overall. We're getting better at white underbase and white highlight but I still don't want to sell them to customers, yet. Every week we get closer and closer -- and we're printers who have been in the industry for over a decade. If you're a new user, expect a HIGH learning curve, regardless of what company's printer you buy.

*Profit*
We're making a killing with this box. Ink is cheap, shirts are cheap, people are willing to pay a lot for a fast turn-around. If we sell shirts at our cheapest, we make $120 an hour (that's AFTER labor and ink and supplies and electricity). If we sell shirts at our most expensive, we make over $300 an hour. Printing money is illegal, but this printer basically does the same thing.

*Quality*
If we see banding, we run a nozzle clean. It doesn't waste a lot of ink. We generally try to do it when we open up but frequently forget. 95% of our shirts print without banding. They're beautiful. People have stopped our customers on the street and asked them where they bought their shirts.

Colors are stunning but take a long time to figure out the proper settings. Text renders sharp and crisp, but it takes time to figure out how far the platen should be from the printhead. Gradients are perfect. Even printing on a light colored shirt, you still get great colors. Blacks are BLACK, if you choose the proper print mode and set up your file correctly.

If you're a newbie, you won't be happy with ANY DTG print quality. It takes practice. It's an art of black magic, until you get your settings. Write them down. Refine them.

*Speed*
With one heat press, we can crank out over 20 shirts per hour on light. With two heat presses, we'll be able to double it. Any nay-sayers are just being ignorant. White underbase takes longer, twice as long. We charge a lot more for white underbase, but make less money.

One big issue with any Epson-based DTG is the ink system. The printer will think it's out of ink every 8-16 shirts, so you need to reset the CISS. This is a pain. We just do it every morning and start from zero, then do it every 1/2 hour to hour. This is one sticky problem that I hope someday can be resolved, but Easy T is using the complete Epson firmware -- this allows them to sell the printer for $8000. I'm not complaining about it.

*Maintenance*
We clean our capping station once or twice a week. We clean the underside of the print carriage once or twice a week. We rarely see banding. We keep our printer in a dedicated climate controlled room: 50-60% humidity, 70 degree temperature. I'm adding a dust filter to the room, too. No direct sunlight, no animals jumping on desks. This printer should not be run in a garage or a mobile studio. It should be climate controlled.

*Print Cost*
It's cheap. The ink is cheap. Our typical light shirt prints are $0.25-$0.50 of ink. Our typical dark shirt prints are $2.50-$4.00 in ink. Labor per shirt is approximately $1 (includes setup, printing, heatpress). If you pay $1.50 for a white shirt, $0.50 for ink and $1.00 for labor, your cost is $2.50. You'll make money, if you have business.

*Printable Items*
Well, there are T-shirts.

We also print canvas totes. Spirit towels. Patches.

I'll get a sleeve platen soon. I may take a look at the hat platen.

*Down-sides*
The biggest downside to the Easy T Printer? It's an $8000 printer.

I want a Neoflex. That'll be our third printer. It's 3x the price. My 2nd printer will be another Easy T but just in dual-CMYK for faster light garment printing.

An $8000 printer can't do as much as a $25,000 printer. I understand this. The 12.5" x 16" platen size is a limitation of sorts. We'd love to do all-over prints. We'd love to print much larger on 5XL shirts. We can't. That's not Easy T's fault, that's because we're cheapskates when it comes to technology that is new to us.

*Room Size*
Our climate controlled room is about 10" x 16". It has our DTG printer, one heat press (soon a second one), and our solvent Mimaki printer. The Mimaki is getting its own room in a month. We can fit a second DTG printer in the DTG room, for sure. We can fit 3 more heat presses. We can fit cubical shelves for the shirts we keep in stock.

*Long Term*
I'm hiring a new employee in August to run our DTG department. I think we can probably afford 3 employees in the DTG department, with how much money one printer can make. With 2 printers, we could probably pay for 7 employees. There's that much business out there.

I know I want a second printer. I want 3 more heat presses. I want an entire dedicated clean room next to my dedicated DTG room just for pretreatment of shirts.

*My Review Rating*
5 stars, because it makes money. 5 stars, because Andy has fixed every problem or concern quickly. 5 stars, because it only took us 4 weeks to figure out most of our questions through trial and error. 5 stars because it's great to make our customers happy with more products.

*WARNING*
If you're new to DTG, expect to have a lot of problems. That'll happy if you have this printer, or a Brother, or a Kornit, or a Neoflex. That's part of learning.

If you're new to printing in general, don't expect to make money for months.

If you're trying to print and you don't have a storefront, don't expect to generate $150 per hour profits. Walk-in business accounts for the vast majority of our profits.

If you don't know how to use CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator, learn that first.

If you aren't familiar with CMYK printing, figure it out. Get yourself a cheap Epson inkjet and see how things on the screen look on white paper. It's similar to DTG on white garments, but not exact.

This is NOT an industry that you can come in totally green and make $6,000 a week profits on. It IS an industry where you CAN make that, but you need a great location, a storefront, a customer service employee watching the door and the phone.

If you're only going to sell online, you have tons of competition. I wouldn't go there myself (we do print online, but we have niche markets that took me years to develop).

*More info?*
If you have any questions I didn't answer (or didn't answer enough), ask here and I'll update this post with the answers.


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## 102557 (Mar 6, 2010)

treefox2118 said:


> It's been exactly one month since we received our Easy T Printer (directly from the manufacturer). I promised to follow-up with some of my thoughts after beating on it for 4 weeks, so here it goes...
> 
> You can read some of my initial thoughts on the printer in these two threads: here and here.
> 
> ...


 
Great review, thanks for the feedback

I see also that your print numbers per hour on lights have came down to earth from the projected 60 an hour on lights in the previous post to the 20-40 range!! congrats again on the new toy..have fun


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

german13 said:


> Great review, thanks for the feedback
> 
> I see also that your print numbers per hour on lights have came down to earth from the projected 60 an hour on lights in the previous post to the 20-40 range!! congrats again on the new toy..have fun


The projected 60 an hour is doable, we just don't have enough heat presses and platens yet.

If we go with 2 heat presses total and 3 platens, we can do 60. I confirmed it with all of my guys and we're all very confident in that figure. It's just getting the hardware and laying out the space differently, but we'll be there.

Here's our breakdown:

1 Heat Press, 1 Printer, 1 Platen: 180 - 240 seconds per shirt (15-20 per hour)
2 Heat Presses, 1 Printer, 1 Platen: 120 - 180 seconds per shirt (20-30 per hour)
2 Heat Presses, 1 Printer, 3 Platens: 60 - 120 seconds per shirt (30-60 per hour)

When we did some large jobs already, I timed every part of one guy running the room. The biggest "downtime" was either waiting for the heat press to finish or loading a shirt on the platen. If the guy had 2 presses, that cuts that wait time. If he has spare platens to load, it's about 5 seconds TOPS to swap platens and start the next print job.

When we get our new heat presses and platens, I'll post a video of us doing 60 shirts an hour.


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## 102557 (Mar 6, 2010)

treefox2118 said:


> The projected 60 an hour is doable, we just don't have enough heat presses and platens yet.
> 
> If we go with 2 heat presses total and 3 platens, we can do 60. I confirmed it with all of my guys and we're all very confident in that figure. It's just getting the hardware and laying out the space differently, but we'll be there.
> 
> ...


I would love to see this raw unedited and preferrably live webcast video of 60 shirts in an hour on a realistic decent size graphic .. your biggest issue will be ink chip reset time aswell along with loading unloading and random general error double flashing yellows that need to be reset.. but it would be cool to see.. always like seeing innovative ways to make things happen.. i would prefer running multiple printers and reducing the labor cost this is a better avenue..imho, with an efficient workflow.. printers dont cost as much as labor,insurance,work comp etc standing around in a slow period and worring about letting people go..


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

german13 said:


> I would love to see this raw unedited and preferrably live webcast video of 60 shirts in an hour on a realistic decent size graphic .. your biggest issue will be ink chip reset time aswell along with loading unloading and random general error double flashing yellows that need to be reset.. but it would be cool to see.. always like seeing innovative ways to make things happen.. i would prefer running multiple printers and reducing the labor cost this is a better avenue..imho, with an efficient workflow.. printers dont cost as much as labor,insurance,work comp etc standing around in a slow period and worring about letting people go..


I plan on doing something similar for sure.

We don't do "decent sized" graphics at our discount rate -- limited to 80 square inches. Anything above that and we charge a "large artwork surcharge", which allows us to print fewer tees per hour but still hit our profit target of $120/hour/department.

Under 80 square inches on the Easy T, on a light shirt, not including mounting the platen, takes about 1 minute to print. Many of our customers who want shirts only need chest prints (logo, website) or centered text (10" x 5" type stuff) since they're cheapskates and don't want to pay the surcharge. That's 60 seconds in 720dpi mode, bidirectional from mounting the pre-loaded platen into the printer, kicking it back, and hitting the print button.

Also, you're right about resetting the ink chips -- so that can reduce the 60 shirts per hour, but we are really quick at resetting the chips (1-2 minutes tops) so it won't affect the speed THAT much.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

A quick update since 10 days ago:

1. We experienced some banding issues in just one color (cyan). A quick email to Andy over at Easy T and he told me to try slightly raising the cyan ink bag. I also cranked the humidity in our climate controller room (from 40% to 60%). The banding appears to go away -- far fewer nozzle cleans as well.

2. We experienced ink leaking into the platen recess. Again, a quick email to Andy was responded to quickly. He told me that my ink bags might be too high. I checked, and it appears someone moved the printer over an ink, pushing the ink tray into the wall and pushing it up nearly an inch. It took me 2 hours to clean the mess, but it's perfectly fine now.

3. Humidity makes a huge difference. If you don't have a climate controller room, expect to have issues. The drier the air in our DTG room, the more issues we've experienced. Is it 100% correlation? Probably not. Also, I think I lost about 3 pounds of body fat just sweating in our makeshift sauna.

4. We've done hundreds of prints now. Until the banding issue cropped up, I would put our overall waste/loss at about 4%. During the banding issue, we were experiencing waste/loss of over 15%, maybe closer to 20%. I'll report back on this once we've done another 50 shirts or so.

5. Profit is definitely in non-white underbase shirts. We've got samples in our store front showing the same design on 10 different colored tees. People actually seem to like the vintage look of printing without a white underbase. One of my customers was ADAMANT he wanted a white underbase on black -- I printed his design on both a black tee (white underbase, $$$$$$$) and on a sand colored tee. He chose the sand colored tee and saved himself a bundle of cash.

6. I have a second platen on order. Once I get it in, I'll do a little video on YouTube showing the performance of the machine. We're running it in unidirectional mode at the moment (haven't taken the time to learn to calibrate bidirectional printing), so we're actually running a LOT slower than we should.

7. Ink usage is pretty decent -- we're already through our first bag of ink (magenta), and according to my job tracking spreadsheet, we're averaging only $0.33 per shirt in ink costs. Again, this is without white underbase. There's a lot of room for improvement here as we figure out various ink settings, heat press settings (temperature, pressure all affect the color and contrast of the final shirt, etc).

8. Maintenance is a breeze. We do 1 hour of maintenance every Monday, and then we do 2 hours of additional maintenance on the first Monday of each month. Figure a total of 6 hours of maintenance a month to keep the printer really clean and happy. The vast majority of maintenance is just keeping the carriage clean as well as the capping station. I'll report back at the 3 month mark if there's any additional maintenance that needs to be done.

Do note that we actually perform MORE maintenance on our color copiers and wide format printers than we do on the DTG. People who are complaining about the DTG being a nightmare haven't done much in the print world. I can't even begin to tell you what a pain it is to clean laser toner out of a $30,000 copier, or having to deal with solvent wide format head clogs. This, in comparison, is a breeze.


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## HMTApparel (Oct 22, 2012)

Wow your experience with Andy at Easy T has been COMPLETELY different from mine. He had a tech come out to fix my printer over a month ago (that I purchased in July) and after several emails regarding getting new ink lines and cartridges, I am YET to receive a response! The customer service has been the most HORRIBLE and unprofessional experience of my life. I am unable to print on dark tees because I have one white ink line that doesn't work and I can't get any help from Andy. I'm extremely frustrated. About time to report them to the BBB. 
It's even more frustrating to hear/read he's giving such great customer service to others.


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## treefox2118 (Sep 23, 2010)

I can't figure out why we're getting great service and you aren't. We're pretty do-it-ourselves, though, so the vast majority of issues we had with the Easy T came back to us doing something wrong, versus bad equipment.

The entire industry is not an easy one to service. I know people with Brother service contracts that still have issues, so I'm guessing it's different machine-to-machine and even install-to-install.

We're so pleased with our first Easy T that we're about to make a deposit on a second one for November.

But, we do a LOT of things ourselves, including swapping out parts we broke or let get broke.

If you're not a DIYer, I wouldn't recommend ANY DTG printer from ANY manufacturer. The industry is FAR from ready for the laymen to just pick it up and print.


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