# INK COST per shirt



## severn06 (Apr 11, 2012)

Hi guys!

I am new here in the forum and so new as well in t shirt screen printing. I am doing the costing for shirt printing and see if it is profitable for me to start a small one.

My question: WHAT IS THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF PRINTS PER VOLUME OF INK PER SIZE OF DESIGN??
for example, assuming i have 1 quart of ink, and 10x12" design. how many shirts can be printed from it?? thank you.

for more accurate information. you can answer by citing one your experiences in producing printed shirts. (example, you have experienced producing 200 shirts in 1 quart of ink.. etc)

Thank you guys. and have a great day.!!!


----------



## d4s (Dec 12, 2011)

The iPhone has a app called Ink Calc Screen Printing...this might do the trick for for!


----------



## treadhead (Jul 26, 2006)

A big part of the answer to that question is how much coverage do you have within that 10 x 12 design (i.e how much shirt is exposed within the design itself). Aside from that, I would love to know the same thing. You can get a pretty good idea of the coverage area per color but how thick the ink layer is has stumped me. Not sure of a good way of figuring that out.


----------



## severn06 (Apr 11, 2012)

treadhead said:


> A big part of the answer to that question is how much coverage do you have within that 10 x 12 design (i.e how much shirt is exposed within the design itself). Aside from that, I would love to know the same thing. You can get a pretty good idea of the coverage area per color but how thick the ink layer is has stumped me. Not sure of a good way of figuring that out.




That is why, we are asking experiences of some, how they produced.. (example, they experienced producing a 3x6" text in a t shirt, and produced 200 shirts in 1 quart).. then you can calculate the thickness.. by getting atleast the cubic centimeter.. and divide it by the area 3x6" -- then there you go, you have the thinkness of the print


----------



## VTG (Dec 16, 2010)

severn06 said:


> My question: WHAT IS THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF PRINTS PER VOLUME OF INK PER SIZE OF DESIGN?? for example, assuming i have 1 quart of ink, and 10x12" design. how many shirts can be printed from it?? thank you.


There are too many independent variables to be able to answer this question with any degree of accuracy.

Knowing the size of the design (i.e. 4x4, 10x12, 16x18) and how many shirt someone _else_ printed with a quart of ink, is not going to provide you with enough _accurate_ information to base _your_ printing costs on.

For instance, one design may by full coverage (within the specifed design area), while another may only have a few small details (within the same design area). In addition, one printer may use a single coat of emulsion (a thin template and a thinner ink deposit) and another may use a double or triple coat of emulsion (a thick template and thicker ink deposit). One printer may hit the print twice (again a thicker coat of ink) and another printer may only hit it once (a thinner coat of ink). One printer may add a "reducer" to their ink (making the ink just a bit thinner and easier to print with and therefore more likely to get a few more prints completed with the same quart of ink), while another printer may not.

And on and on ...

If you really want to figure this out, you'd be best served by running your own test.

Good luck.
.


----------

