Need Help with First Purchase

[cjblevins 0]

We have been in the embroidery business for the past several years.. mostly do monogramming on apparel and accessories..  We are looking into getting into vinyl, and need help determining what is needed to start up..  For now, we will only be applying to shirts, bags, cozies, etc..  We know nothing about the vinyl process, so any help will be much appreciated.. We did learn with our embroidery machine not to go with the cheaper machine.. we found we were very limited, and not even 3 months into it ended up selling, and buying 2 much larger machines... So we definitely don't want to make the same mistake.. we don't want to limit ourselves, but also don't want to put several $1,000's into it right off the bat.. We appreciate any imput, and offer thanks in advance. 

[security802 686]

http://www.uscutter.com/index/page/static/subpage/buying_guides_new

 

Your best place to start

[bamafan2277 50]

Start with a Graphtec machine. Like you expereinced with your embroidery machines you need to get the best you possibly can. A 24" graphtech will probably support you for quite a while with very few headaches.

[cjblevins 0]

Thanks bamafan227.    What heat press do you suggest?  To start-up, what other items am I required to purchase?  The cutter machine, heatpress, vinyl?  what else is required?  Very new at this, and want to make sure that I'm figuring all costs when deciding on machine..  Also, what program do you use, and is it uploadable to multiple computers? 

[slice&dice 2,450]

I am by no means someone who knows very much about this, but it would seem to me that if cjblevins is seeking to work exclusively with transferring graphics to fabrics, perhaps a direct-to-garment (DTG) full-color printer is worthwhile investigating?

 

 

[Wildgoose 4,200]

With vinyl you will be mainly doing solid colors with few color layers. Besides some design software which you may already own you would need a cutter and a heat press. You don't absolutely need top of the line equipment but as you mentioned often the cheapest isn't the most cost effective. 

[MadHatterGraphix 1,258]

A Graphtech CE6000-60 24" vinyl cutter is around $1700 and a Good heat press would be the Stahl's Hotronix Fusion and thats about $1,900. Now if your just looking into vinyl thats a good step however you can also get into other t-shirt transfers, specially if you have a laser printer (color), and an inkjet that has pigment ink. You can get into the industry by using Jetpro Soft Stretch Inkjet paper for Whites, and Jetpro 3G Opaque for Color and darks. Now if you have the Laser printer by OKI that uses white toner the  world is yours. If not you still can get papers to do laser t-shirt papers. As for your vinyls for fabrics those are called HTV for heat transfer vinyl and the best is Easyweed by SISER in fact all their vinyls are great.

[jaybyrd 3,770]

I vote DTG printer but you still need a heat press and if doing dark there is some equipment involved in pretreatment. Wish I had one.

[MadHatterGraphix 1,258]

DTG is nice but expensive and as I recall they dont want to spend 1K's on it and the cheapest is $15,000 new. Used ones like I got are still 5k to 10K and sort of out dated in resolution, and when they say refurbished they aren't done that great. Mine has issues such as the power button doesn't want to stay on and the ink lines jammed when going back and forth and it was the ribbed line holder not the lines in general. Today's is so much nicer with the ink delivery systems they have. However like you said Jay for darks you need to buy a pretreat even thought I think todays DTG's you dont, but dont qoute me on that. You can get the automatic pretreaters but those are expensive add on, or you can buy like I did a electric paint gun for painting houses and use that. Pretreat cleans up with water and store it in a closet. 

[cjblevins 0]

Here are some ideas of some items we are looking into doing.. Just basic monograms.. Mostly one color, but some things will have some multiple color layers, but nothing too fancy..

 

We are really liking the thoughts of the Graphtec, but are wondering with what we are starting with.. would the 34" SC series be a good starter for us, just to get things up and running....  Also, wouldn't be long for a ROI, then step up to the Graphtec later.  We won't be doing anything that we would have need of a printer... I guess we could, but not really the direction that we are looking into going.. (at least I don't think so)... I'll attach some pics of what we're wanting to do, and any imput will be appreciated..

 

Also, we have no idea on Heat Presses.. what kind of investment are we looking at here?  I guess we were hoping for something more in the under $500 range.. is this possible, with what we're looking into?

 

Thanks again!

[DCMoney 91]

I started "cheap" and after 9 months upgraded to a Graphtec CE6000, wish I would have started with the graphtech from the get go.

[cjblevins 0]

Can you explain why DCMONEY?   Hope you don't mind me asking.. just trying to Pro and Con this thing..... 

[MadHatterGraphix 1,258]

I recently upgraded to the Graphtech CE6000-60 also. I upgraded due to I have had a value cutter MH MK2 for about 5 years. After years of struggling to get things dialed in and not caring for the restraints of how small and how it was a problematic cutter I said thats it I'm getting  a lease. I read a lot of reviews, watched a lot of videos, and lots of kind people on here pointed me to Graphtech, the nice thing is I wanted to upgrade my Heatpress also it was a cheap ebay one and I wanted something better.

 

In short I went with the Graphtech due to

 

It can cut small text and images, 

Its a servo motor more control and so so silent.

It has ARM (Automatic Registration Mark) for print and cut.

The special features that it has built into the printer there are too many to list.

Comes with Corel Draw and Illustrator plug-ins which I use more than any cutting software, due to I design in Corel Draw X7.

 

All I can say is after a fine tune not major and finding out where I went wrong with the blade (operators error) I haven't looked back or complain about getting the lease. Both Machines were the best purchases ever.

[DCMoney 91]

Can you explain why DCMONEY?   Hope you don't mind me asking.. just trying to Pro and Con this thing..... 

 

Just as a disclaimer, I'm not a professional, just got into vinyl myself 15 months ago and t shirt only 6 months ago, this is all done out of my basement. I've tried keeping things cheap to maximize profits, but the more I do the more I just buy the right tools to make the job easier. T shirt side has taken over and I don't do that many vinyl decals any more.

 

I had a Titan 2, so not exactly a cheap cutter but it's no Graphtec.

 

With the titan 2 I had to spend a good amount of time getting it to cut tiny text (1/8" tall), anytime I replaced a blade I had to start all over to get it dialed in to the optimum cutting capabilities.

 

Titan 2 example.

 

 

Graphtech, pull out of box assembly, set blade height according to Sketerz post all over this forum. Cut 3/32" text out of the box.

 

Graphtech example- didn't have anything in the pic for size reference, overall height was around 4 inches. Semper Fidelis was less than 3/32" tall.

 

 

 

Graphtec has an abundant amount of features the Titan 2 doesn't, to the point it was almost overwhelming when I got the graphtec. Media Sensors, push roller sensor, prefeed (nice feature to making sure the media is going to feed true).

 

Most here turn off the media and push roller sensors but I love them both.

 

I do a lot of HTV t shirts and most of my graphics are less than the push roller width on a 15" roll of media so I can load the roll hit a button it finds the start of the media, knows the width of the media because of the push roller sensor. I send the graphic, trim the graphic once it's done cutting, tap the push roller lever, hit the button again and it finds the new start of the roll. Before I would load the media and spend 10-30 seconds trying to minimise the waste, where now the sensors do it for me. I also have the software (Cutting Master 3) set to feed 2.125" once the cutting is done and it leaves about 1/8" gap for trimming, this could be done with the titan 2 software as well. 

 

I save probably 1 minute of time per cut because of the features on the Graphtec over the titan 2.

 

I haven't taken advantage of the ARM, but I do use Adobe Illustrator and the CM3 (cutting master 3) plug in, which saves me time over using AI then going to SCALP (Sure Cuts A Lot Pro what came with the Titan 2 when I bought it) or another software.

 

If you already have a customer base that buys embroidered items from you, adding HTV to it is going to get you even more customers and business. Dont skip out on a heat press.

 

I bought a cheap china 15x15 t shirt press to start with to see if the t shirt thing was going to work out, and it did so after 500+ t shirts between February and June I finally started looking to upgrade. I decided to go with a Geo Knight DK20SP.

 

Pros of the DK20SP

It's pneumatic,

16x20 heating pallet

Swing away.

Auto Open

 

Cons

It's pneumatic, so you have to have an air source.

Weights a ton.

Expensive Brand new $2250

 

Why I didn't buy the Hotronix Fusion - no auto open, wanted to be able to start a shirt and walk away to multitask and not have to rush over to the press when the shirt was done. Plus hitting two buttons and have the press do its job is really nice.

 

[Wildgoose 4,200]

Here are some ideas of some items we are looking into doing.. Just basic monograms.. Mostly one color, but some things will have some multiple color layers, but nothing too fancy..

 

We are really liking the thoughts of the Graphtec, but are wondering with what we are starting with.. would the 34" SC series be a good starter for us, just to get things up and running....  Also, wouldn't be long for a ROI, then step up to the Graphtec later.  We won't be doing anything that we would have need of a printer... I guess we could, but not really the direction that we are looking into going.. (at least I don't think so)... I'll attach some pics of what we're wanting to do, and any imput will be appreciated..

 

Also, we have no idea on Heat Presses.. what kind of investment are we looking at here?  I guess we were hoping for something more in the under $500 range.. is this possible, with what we're looking into?

 

Thanks again!

You can get by with an SC model. I started out with something very similar to that and ran for a couple years. I started getting mass orders and the cheaper cutters can't handle mass production. The most I could usually get at a time was about 10-15 copies of a design before the machine memory would lock it up or it would twig out for some other reason. I basically hovered over the cutter the entire time it was busy ready to push the panic button if/when something went wrong. 

[MadHatterGraphix 1,258]

Oh the panic button way better than the MH MK2 Self destruct button.

[Wildgoose 4,200]

Ha ha! That is probably the thing I most value about my Summa. I load a roll of vinyl and start the cut and wander off to do something else without a worry. I regularly cut 10 yard rolls of HTV in one shot.