Advice for upgrades
Hello fellow creatives (not me though, I'm asking on behalf of my wife), would you be able to pass on some knowledge and sage advice?
Right now my wife is running an Etsy shop and personal site selling mostly Heat Transfer Vinyl based tees, teddies, bags, etc. She's making all of this using a Cricut Explore 3 as it was very hobbyist, along with a half decent heat press with electromagnetic pressure.
It's time to grow up a bit. We're going to be building a 5m X 5m building for her to work out of rather than a small office space in the house (she has a lot of stock) and with this, maybe it's time to upgrade the equipment.
She's not been fond of sublimation, although we have an A3 Epson for that. She's not keen on polyester. So the question is: does she upgrade from using a small Epson EcoTank and Cricut to something like a Roland BN20 or BN20D or simply go for a larger format cutter since she buys it buy the roll anyway? DTG seems very expensive and DTF is so new that you need to printer daily to stop the heads dying. I think she likes Vinyl and she also likes a little print and cut, but not so much of the latter as the combo she has is pretty shite.
Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? I'm trying to look at a budget of sub £10k for hardware. Happy to second hand if it's recommended.
I happen to have done some research on this a while back but I don't do this kind of work, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Dye-sub is the oldest and therefore likely to be cheaper and/or more reliable. The printers, inks, and transfer media are fairly inexpensive so I would probably choose that one if I were to start a business. DTG, however, is a lot more convenient since it is printing directly to the fabric. The downside to DTG, though, is that it can only print to cotton and there may be odd problems if you want to try to print onto things other than garments. I kind of don't like it as much because it gives the printer too much leeway into the process, which made it seem like it was less of a thing you could just replace if something goes wrong. Printing direct is a definite positive, though, so it's really a matter of your personal ideals.
DTF was so new and expensive at the time I was looking this up that I didn't really consider it. It might work out now, but I'd consider it to be a more risky investment.
In regards to cutters, it seemed at the time of my research that the people looking to make money off of their work or just to do more advanced things that Silhouette was the better option. Their software is much better and their hardware is a bit more convenient in certain situations. I just looked them up and their big 24" cutter is only $500.
More than anything, if your wife is running the business, let her make the decisions. 🙂
If I let the wife make the decision on this she'd buy a £100k professional machine and have nowhere to put it =D
She asked me for an idea of what is better than she's got so I'm just looking around at what's outs there.
DTF (Direct To Film) is becoming all the rage but it looks like there is still issues, especially with ink set in the heads and wastage.
It might be she just needs to have a wide printer and plotter/dye cutter as the next step up, just so she can roll print rather than A4 and A3 sheets. She can only dye sub up to A3 and print and cut to A4 at this time.