I’ve been in and out and back in the t-shirt business for 19 years.
The Epson F2000 is an awesome printer. But there are some caveats.
First of all, it’s great for a shop that isn’t already selling shirts. Most shops start by outsourcing their printing to others until they’re doing at least 100 sales a week. DTG printers used to need to print DAILY or they’d dry up and need an expensive repair/replacement.
The Epson F2000 has reduced this need – you can print as infrequently as once a week and not get bad clogs.
The downside is that the F2000 is expensive when it comes to ink. On my Neoflex DTG (3 years old technology), I pay about $150 a liter for all 5 colors (cyan, magenta, black, yellow and white). The Epson F2000 ink is $210 for 600ml, or $350 per liter – more than double.
Labor is the most expensive part of printing. The Epson F2000 is pretty quick, but it isn’t much quicker than the older DTG technology. The ink is the third most expensive part (second is machine depreciation). On a given shirt, I am spending anywhere from $0.25 to $2.25 for ink alone. On an Epson, this price could be more than double.
Does it matter? I think the reduced maintenance is a big labor and cost saver, but if you’re a busy shop, the reduced print time requirement isn’t an issue. We print 6-7 days a week, year round. The ink cost worries me. On some t-shirt shop owner forums, people also mention that the Epson forces an ink purge every so many weeks – that’s costly ink flushed down the drain.
Great printer, and it’s already put MASSIVE price pressure on older technology. I just ordered a second Neoflex DTG (I am not affiliated with them, I just love their product and service) because I know how profitable it is. I generate about $6 profit per shirt, and produce anywhere from 14 to 40 shirts an hour with just one guy running everything during a shift.
Also something to mention: the video shown is strictly for the white ink pass. The Epson F2000 currently requires 2 passes to do color on a dark cotton garment: the first pass is white ink only, the second pass is color ink and sometimes a highly white ink. So that 1 minute print can turn into 2-2.5 minutes pretty quickly.
On my Neoflex DTG (and some of the competitors), they offer a 1-pass option that prints white and color together. It doesn’t “pop” as much as the 2-pass standard option, but labor savings is enormous and I give my customers the option to choose which mode they want, and how much they want to pay.
Disapointed. I thought it was a 3D printer that printed T-Shirts.
There’s some vaporware that wants to be the first 3D t-shirt printer.
What is that music? It sounds like something I’ve heard before… St. Paul at the End of the World?
Rob, what is the music?
How does that thing work?
I’d suggest spraying-on a nonwoven-fabric precursor - a mix of fibers with a binder, or a polymer solution. (That way more layers could be done with different properties, e.g. sweat-wicking on the inside for exercising, or a barrier layer with tailored properties for protective clothing.) By using water-soluble separator layers, even pockets could be possibly done. Sensors and conductors, or coolant tubes, could be placed between layers as well (spray on the backing, stick on the modules, overspray the top layer), leading to wearable technology.
The model, the torso on which the material will be sprayed, could be made specific for the person, by 3d-printing from a scan.
Could be useful for some quite customizable well-fitting hightech garments…!
And there are already experiments with spray-on latex clothing (I don’t remember if it is from the tech field or from the fetish scene, they often overlap), so the approach may be actually feasible.
The software seems to support some important file formats.
I wonder if it would run in WINE.
Prediction: Time that will elapse between the first purchase of this printer and the first article on “t-shirt printing addiction” = 24 hrs.
“Hipster found dead in apartment surrounded by hilarious t-shirts”
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