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Dec. 23, 2024
The DTG ink used can be the most expensive part of a DTG print, which is why so many people are interested in buying in bulk. However, it is critical to understand how using sealed cartridges or bulk ink can affect your profitability.
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Bulk ink is an excellent way to reduce ink costs when printing DTG. Before deciding on a direct-to-garment printer for your company, find out whether it uses sealed cartridges or a bulk ink system.
What You Should Understand About Bulk Ink?
The best part about buying in bulk is how much money you can save. Because you are purchasing in bulk, your overall ink cost is reduced. However, if your new printer starts with bulk ink and your production isnt up to par, you could lose money.
Bulk ink is ideal for printing multiple hours per day. When this type of DTG ink system is used and not printed consistently, it can lead to unnecessary maintenance, which can cost more than you were saving.
If you own a printing business, you may have read about the differences between screen printing and direct-to-garment (DTG) printing from various sources. Many of these sources provided estimates to illustrate the cost differences between these two types of printing. While helpful, it doesnt paint an accurate picture of the differences because they didnt factor ink costs, design complexity, ink consumption, and other points that influence the overall DTG ink cost scenario.
Were here to fill in that gap with an in-depth analysis of ink cost differences. In this article, well share our review of ink costs based on actual data gained from our own observations in both screen printing and DTG printing.
Our analysis factors in the two of the most popular DTG printers on the market: the Brother GTXpro and the Epson SureColor F, both of which are mid-ranged DTG printers.
The major DTG manufacturers like Brother and Epson produce their own proprietary inks, and this makes DTG ink expensive (printer inks are already a costly affair). Fortunately, the Epson SureColor F is known to be compatible with a wide range of third-party inks that are cheaper, so we will include Epson-compatible ink costs (henceforth referred to as compatible inks) into our experiment as well.
For the purposes of our analysis, we calculated the ink cost of printing the following THREE different designs with screen printing ink and DTG ink.
We will look at the ink costs in terms of:
Then well discuss which type of printing is suitable for you based on your business model and how fast you can achieve ROI with both screen printing and DTG printing.
What we have found can be summarized as follows:
Both DTG and screen printing can be suitable for you, depending on your business model. Heres the ink cost of screen printing and DTG printing in summary:
Design 1 is a simple 2-color design on a white shirt. The cost is less for both screen printing and DTG printing when compared to the other designs. To make a profit, the Epson F with genuine ink can print an order size of 61 shirts max before screen printing overtakes in terms of cost efficiency. For the Brother GTXpro, the order size is 66. If the Epson F uses compatible ink, the order size goes up to 96 shirts.
This tells us that, whether youre using DTG or screen printing, you can still make a healthy profit because the ink costs are low, mainly due to the simple design and low color requirement. However, DTG will still be the less profitable option compared to screen printing once you go beyond 96 shirts with compatible inks.
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Design 2 is also a 2-color design similar to Design 1, but is printed on a black shirt instead. The maximum order size (before screen printing becomes more cost efficient than DTG) for both the Brother GTXpro and Epson F with genuine ink is 21 shirts, while the Epson-compatible ink order size is slightly better at 26 shirts.
For DTG printers, the cost to print a black shirt is almost triple the cost of printing a white shirt. This is because DTG printing requires a white underbase to be printed on colored/non-white shirts in order to let the colors stand out. That extra layer of white ink will increase the overall cost. Hence, for designs like this (simple and with fewer colors), DTG can hardly compete with screen printing, which doesnt need a white underbase.
Design 3 is a more complex design with more colors involved, which has a more profound effect for screen printing costs than it does for DTG printing. The maximum order size (before screen printing becomes more cost efficient than DTG) for Epson F with genuine ink is 46 shirts, while the Brother GTXpro is 56 shirts while the Epson-compatible ink is 71 shirts.
This is where DTG can really shine. DTG can print intricate, customized designs for low-volume orders that put screen printing at a disadvantage. Screen printing requires each color to be applied separately. With each additional ink that needs to be added, thats an additional cost not just for each color thats applied, but also in terms of the overall print time.
What about printing speeds? How fast can a DTG printer print each of these designs? Let the infographic below help illustrate this.
For design 1, a Brother GTXpro can print 116 shirts in 81.2 minutes max before screen printing overtakes it in terms of print speed and cost efficiency. An Epson F is slower, printing 71 shirts in 62.48 minutes.
With design 2, a Brother GTXpro prints can print 51 shirts in 56.1 minutes, which is about 1 shirt per minute. The Epson F can only print 21 shirts in 44 minutes: that is about 2 minutes per shirt.
Lastly, a Brother GTXpro can print 56 shirts of design 3 in 100.8 minutes, while an Epson F takes 86.4 minutes to print 36 shirts with that design
If youre using an Epson F printer, the use of compatible inks will help you save a lot on your ink costs. The difference between using Epsons proprietary ink and compatible inks is almost $1, if not more! If you print 50 shirts a day, you can save at least $18,000 a year. With the money saved, you could be financing your second DTG printer within a year!
Ultimately, DTG printing is still a better choice if youre taking on low volume custom orders that require complex art with many colors. If youre getting more contract printing with higher volumes, you should scale with screen printing instead. A manual press can be as cheap as a few thousand dollars for a 4-color-4-screen press and can print between 66-150 shirts per hour; an auto press can print up to thousands in the same amount of time, which is a lot more than two DTG printers combined!
To sum it up, ink costs matter a lot in the long-term. If you already have an Epson F, you can use compatible ink to help keep your costs manageable. However, using the right business model is also important, else your business might not be able to profit as much as it should.
Visualizing ink cost difference between DTG and screen printing
Its still possible to take on larger volumes of DTG orders, but that requires a heavy investment into industrial-grade DTG printers, like those offered by Kornit or M&R. Those will easily set you back a few hundred thousand dollars for the machine alone!
It is, if:
You can first start out with DTG printing to fulfill low-volume orders and then scale with screen printing as your business grows, and you receive more contract printing or fulfillment orders. If youre already an established print shop, you could add DTG printing as an additional service for interested customers, but make sure you have a healthy demand for it that can help with covering your overall costs, including the added DTG expenses.
WithYoprint Team
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