# How many shirts can DTG print in an hour?



## HMD10 (Feb 17, 2008)

*How many shirts can you DTG print in an hour (full front 1 sided)?*

How many shirts can you do on your DTG printer an Hour (One Sided-full chest)?

I'm running a t-jet jumbo2

White/Lights- 48 shirts
Darks- 30 shirts

That is pressed and in the box. I would love to see how quick others are printing. see if I'm slow or fast. Thanks for the feed back


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## tshirtd (Feb 15, 2008)

a perfect 23 color 11*16.5

every 15 seconds...,

gl ,


dunnietracer


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## Don-ColDesi (Oct 18, 2006)

> How many shirts can you do on your DTG printer an Hour (One Sided-full chest)?
> 
> I'm running a t-jet jumbo2
> 
> ...


I gotta call you on this one. Dupont calls for up to 3 minutes cure time on their white ink, which would translate into at least 90 minutes of cure time for 30 shirts unless you are running multiple heat presses. Same goes for the color inks, they recommend in the area of 2 minutes to cure a light garment, again 2 x 48 is more than an hour. Any chance of getting a video up of maybe 10 minutes of this production? Those numbers are faster than even the $200K Kornit and any of the Epsons. I might buy 20 per hour, but still think that is pushing it for one operator, especially when you have to pre-treat and press the shirts prior to printing. 

Mathematically, based on a 1440 x 1440 underbase and a 1440 x 720 or 720 x 720 color pass, it should take 3 times as long to print a dark shirt (or shirts on the Jumbo 2) as it does to print a single pass light garment. Assuming your 48 light shirt number is correct (which sounds close to me) - then you should be producing no more than 16 dark shirts per hour.

What all are you calculating into your equation - pre-treating and pre-pressing? RIP time, is this for the same image? How many operators and how many heat presses?


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## mike2468 (Mar 11, 2007)

WOW!

Even on my blazer I don't anywhere close to that. I did some 9"x12" color prints on black shirts and the best I can do, (and maintain high quality prints), is 5, maybe 6 shirts per hour if I hussle. Now that's printing at 1440 underbase and 720 top coat. It use to take longer to print but I got some tips from other users and cut my printing down a bit.


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## Mistewoods (Jul 7, 2007)

On our Flexi L printing on lights only ( no white ink) we can print 45 shirts per hour on a good day- curing 55-60 seconds with dtginks-- at 350 on the heat press. 

On a smaller print we have printed 90 tote bags an hour- printing 4 per pass, and curing more than one at a time on the heat press at higher heat for 20 seconds ( with R & H- and yes they washed fine- though they were not intended to be washed).


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## HMD10 (Feb 17, 2008)

I cure my shirts at 400 for 25sec every time have been for 2 years and I have done wash test.


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## HMD10 (Feb 17, 2008)

What all are you calculating into your equation - pre-treating (yes) and pre-pressing (yes)? RIP time (process about 8 jobs at a time the mach. never stops-6min max), is this for the same image(yes, but doesn't matter)? How many operators (2) and how many heat presses (1)?


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## Mistewoods (Jul 7, 2007)

Mistewoods said:


> On our Flexi L printing on lights only ( no white ink) we can print 45 shirts per hour on a good day- curing 55-60 seconds with dtginks-- at 350 on the heat press.
> 
> On a smaller print we have printed 90 tote bags an hour- printing 4 per pass, and curing more than one at a time on the heat press at higher heat for 20 seconds ( with R & H- and yes they washed fine- though they were not intended to be washed).


This is one operator, one heat press, one Flexi L printing two shirts ( 4 tote bags) per pass. It can actually print four shirts per pass but we found it didn't save much time on full front prints as we had to wait for the press. Timed from the box back into the box including ripping one design and setting up a production run. Printing dual cmyk 360 by 360. No prepress, not needed on these runs we timed.

What ink do you use JM with the high temp short cure time?


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## DAGuide (Oct 2, 2006)

Jamie,

Those are really impressive numbers. I am not sure if the average shop can do them, but that is more of a props to your team. 400 degrees on a cotton shirt is higher than what almost any shops do. You almost press your shirts like most sublimation transfers (just need to extend the time a little longer). It would be interesting to see what others get for a wash test at that time / temperature.

Mark


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## Hansca (Feb 5, 2007)

ok, I also run a T-Jet Jumbo 2. My last job on black shirts 11.5 X 14.5, 1440 underbase 720 color pass, ran 12-14 shirts an hour in the box.

Pre-treating is not a seperate time as you can pre-treat while you are printing. 

White or light color shirts 360 2 pass 48 shirts per hour. 720 1 pass with cmyk ink levels bumped a bit to still get a vibrant print you can push 60 an hour since you are eliminating that extra bed reset. 

I cure white shirts at 325 degrees for 90-110 seconds depending on humidity levels and 200-220 seconds on dark shirts. 

LC prints on whites of course are close to 120 an hour since you can cure 3 shirts at a time per heat press. Be prepared to run if you are by yourself.


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## Hansca (Feb 5, 2007)

I will test the 400 degree press and see what results I get. It's just about getting that moisture out without scorching the shirt....


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## HMD10 (Feb 17, 2008)

Hansca- It took you 60mins to run 12-14 shirts (black)????are you running six at a time???


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## Peta (Jan 25, 2007)

We have done some testing with the "new" bright white in a T-Jet2 this week.
And now we get a perfect coverage of white in 720dpi underbase. We printed a job with a 25*25cm print (almost 10*10 inch) and we did 25 shirts in 55 minutes. Pretreating, printing and curing at the same time. One operator (my best one in the shop) and I was just watching all shirts flying around in the shop *LOL*

Notice that this resolution only worked on our most expensive shirt with really high quality cotton.


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## TahoeTomahawk (Apr 12, 2006)

Peta said:


> We have done some testing with the "new" bright white in a T-Jet2 this week.
> And now we get a perfect coverage of white in 720dpi underbase. We printed a job with a 25*25cm print (almost 10*10 inch) and we did 25 shirts in 55 minutes. Pretreating, printing and curing at the same time. One operator (my best one in the shop) and I was just watching all shirts flying around in the shop *LOL*
> 
> Notice that this resolution only worked on our most expensive shirt with really high quality cotton.


I thought the Kiosk and T-Jet2 were very similar. Based on Epson 2200?
There is no way that machine could get through 50 passes in 55 minutes. It took our machine about 3 / 3.5 min to get through a single pass of white or color at 720 dpi. 

Based on those numbers, it would take me about 2.5 hours. 
Is there some other settings that make your 720 dpi pass faster than ours? I'd love to know to get some speed out of this machine.

-Adam


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## HMD10 (Feb 17, 2008)

If you can't print more than 40 white shirts and hour it wouldn't be worth it at least to me. Unless you are charging over $15.00 a shirt on large orders(25-200).


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## Peta (Jan 25, 2007)

TahoeTomahawk said:


> I thought the Kiosk and T-Jet2 were very similar. Based on Epson 2200?
> There is no way that machine could get through 50 passes in 55 minutes. It took our machine about 3 / 3.5 min to get through a single pass of white or color at 720 dpi.
> 
> Based on those numbers, it would take me about 2.5 hours.
> ...


Hi Adam!

Do you use HS-mode (Bi-directional printing)?
We have a light shirt job that is 25*18cm and no white that we print 60-65 shirts/hour in 720dpi HS.

Notice that the image I refered to was 10*10 inch and not the full board size.


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## TahoeTomahawk (Apr 12, 2006)

Hi Peter,
yes we use High Speed Bi-directional.
We just ran a batch that was roughly 10x10 a little less, and each layer white / color took about 3.5 min to complete based on how fast the bed was moving.

When you get some time, can you make a video of your print bed moving? I'd like to compare it to mine at 720 to see if maybe there is the rip program controlling how fast it prints?

Thanks!
-Adam


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## Hansca (Feb 5, 2007)

To answer you JM... yes 14 shirts an hour 11.5 X 14.5 black shirts, 25 minutes to run 6 up through. 1440 X 720.

I would really like to see a vid on how you are getting any faster production times....


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## Hansca (Feb 5, 2007)

BTW... 
tested the 400 degrees at 25 secs.. no problem on white shirts. that does eliminate that bottleneck.

I am now going to run my next dark shirt job at 720 underbase since I don't go over 40% on white. This will get me to 25-30 an hour on darks.


That will be nice


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## mardiv (May 12, 2008)

this is fun to read! Where are the others? Brother, AnaJet?! I'm so curious!! 

thanks everyone!


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## TahoeTomahawk (Apr 12, 2006)

Hansca said:


> BTW...
> tested the 400 degrees at 25 secs.. no problem on white shirts. that does eliminate that bottleneck.
> 
> I am now going to run my next dark shirt job at 720 underbase since I don't go over 40% on white. This will get me to 25-30 an hour on darks.
> ...


Hans, did I misunderstand you or did you mean you are really printing 25-30 dark shirts per hour?
Wow, that's like 1 min per layer. What kind of printer do you have? I've never seen a Kiosk or T-Jet print 720dpi that fast.

Can one of you guys please post a video?

Thanks!


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## equipmentzone (Mar 26, 2008)

Both Hansca and JMclothing run T-Jet Jumbo 2 printers.

Harry


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## FulStory (Jun 5, 2013)

Don-ColDesi said:


> I gotta call you on this one. Dupont calls for up to 3 minutes cure time on their white ink, which would translate into at least 90 minutes of cure time for 30 shirts unless you are running multiple heat presses. Same goes for the color inks, they recommend in the area of 2 minutes to cure a light garment, again 2 x 48 is more than an hour. Any chance of getting a video up of maybe 10 minutes of this production? Those numbers are faster than even the $200K Kornit and any of the Epsons. I might buy 20 per hour, but still think that is pushing it for one operator, especially when you have to pre-treat and press the shirts prior to printing.
> 
> Mathematically, based on a 1440 x 1440 underbase and a 1440 x 720 or 720 x 720 color pass, it should take 3 times as long to print a dark shirt (or shirts on the Jumbo 2) as it does to print a single pass light garment. Assuming your 48 light shirt number is correct (which sounds close to me) - then you should be producing no more than 16 dark shirts per hour.
> 
> What all are you calculating into your equation - pre-treating and pre-pressing? RIP time, is this for the same image? How many operators and how many heat presses?


so white dupont takes 3 min, color dupont takes 2 min, so if dark shirt, what is the time suppose to print that? since dark shirt have both color and white.


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