While it may seem like a big investment, the ROI or return on that investment is easy to see and calculate. We’ll examine those numbers shortly.
But first, what IS a professional garment printer?
Custom T-Shirt Printing Machines for Pros
Direct to garment printing is the technology choice for most professional t-shirt shops.
The advantages to one of these specialized inkjet printers designed specifically for printing on fabric are pretty compelling:
No set up time or cost
Direct to garment or DTG printers are all digital. That means that you can go from a graphic file, either yours or a customer, to a finished t-shirt in minutes.
That’s as opposed to a screen printing or silk-screening method, which requires quite a bit of setup time and always has a “set-up charge” attached. You can read more about silk-screening on wiki.
Unlimited Colors
If you’ve ever brought a logo or image to get printed at a traditional garment printer’s shop, they’ve probably tried talking you DOWN on the number of colors.
That’s a sure sign that they’re either using screen printing or heat transfer vinyl to make your design. Every time you go from a 1 color to a 4 or 6 color design on either one of those methods it gets 4x or 6x more complicated.
With a professional garment printer machine like a DTG printer the number of colors is no object. Because it’s a digital ink jet printer, like a commercial version of your home color printer, you can print ANY design without worrying about the number of colors.
You don’t count the colors when you print a photo on your printer, do you?
Feathering and Fades
Sometimes called the “smoke effect”, professional inkjet t-shirt printers create amazing fades from one color to the next AND from a color to nothing.
What’s VERY simple for a digital inkjet printer is impossible or incredibly difficult with anything else.
If you look at the image below you’ll see a few great examples of this effect. It really shows up in any image with fur, smoke or a fade to nothing
How Much is a Professional Garment Printer?
Prices vary over time depending on supply, demand, and current market conditions, but you can plan on spending $20,000 to $25,000 for a complete professional garment printer package.
On the higher end, you can spend in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a Kornit or Aeoon DTG Printer, but for a more common one like the DTG G4 that will be in the ballpark.
Other things you’ll need that may or may not be included in the average price are:
- A commercial heat press. Or 2 depending on your set up
- Automatic pretreatment machine
- DTG Inks – some will come with the printer
- Miscellaneous supplies
- Training and support
There’s a chance you may be able to write off a portion the initial cost on your taxes – check with a tax pro about that.
And there’s almost always financing available if you have the credit score for it. The good news with financing is that if you’re looking for BUSINESS financing the “pulling” of your credit normally doesn’t show up on future credit reports.
Financing rates probably fluctuate more than ANYTING in the equipment business, but right now you can probably finance a professional t-shirt printer set up, including heat press and supplies for about $525/month. [depending on your credit, length of the lease and terms]