# Costs of DTG printing



## MagnumGrafX (Nov 6, 2007)

I'm looking for information on costs of printing DTG. Thinking about adding a unit to our shop. If anyone has a baseline for costs to do a shirt, white & black shirts. Just throwing it around. 

What kind of machine you print with, happy with it, how many shirts you print a month?


----------



## Printzilla (Mar 22, 2007)

It depends.  I have owned a Kornit, 16 Epson based printers, and now use a Brother 782. Here are my thoughts. 

The Kornit has the cheapest ink, but costs between 120-280k to get started, and they do not have the best reputation for reliability. They do put out amazing prints when they work. 

The Brother 782, which I currently use, costs around 62k to get started. It has been a marvelous machine for me so far. It has its issues, issues just like every piece of equipment, but they are minor, and Brother is working to correct them to make the machine perfect. The ink is expensive if you are not buying in bulk. I find that it costs less to print o. The Brother than it did my Epson based machines, however the daily maintenance cost is between $12-$15. 

The Epson based machines are between 12-20k, so they are the cheapest to get into. The ink is cheaper, but it uses almost twice as much per print, so the per print cost is the same if not higher. They put out incredible detail. The reason I chose to move away from the Epson based units was the print did not last as long or feel as good as the Brother. 

All the units require a pretreatment to be sprayed on the garment before printing with white ink, so this factors into cost as well.

The cost to print a shirt depends on the size of the print, the coverage of the print, and whther it need white ink. A 10x12 on a white shirt will cost less than a quarter. However that same 10x12 on a black shirt with full coverage, could cost $3. If it has only 50% coverage, it could cost $1. 

The best thing to do is post specific artwork on the forum, and let some of the members give you an estimate of what it costs on their machine. 

Make sure you search the forum for bagged inks, and read all of the info. This is the most critical information by far.*


What size designs do you need to print? This will make a difference on what printer you need*

And do you know for sure you will be producing over 1000 shirts a month right off the bat, or will you ramp up to that? If you think you might start out at 10-15 per day, you should consider contracting out to a fulfillment service at first. You don't lose much margin, and if the business does not take off like you thought, then you are not out the huge investment. Plus you can spend the time marketing and making sales (the only thing that REALLY matters), not printing shirts.*

Hope his helps!

Printzilla


----------



## MagnumGrafX (Nov 6, 2007)

I currently have a 6 color 4 station manual press and am thinking about selling everything & buying a DTG printer. I know it's fairly inexpensive to run this press but was wondering about the DTG printers. My problem is time, the screens are so time consuming, it's just me & my wife and the embroidery & vinyl printer are ever so busy. I have to do the artwork for the shirts regardless, just thought it may eliminate a bunch of time that I wouldn't be doing with the DTG. Thanx for any & all input


----------

