Can You REALLY Make Money With the xTool Apparel Printer Plus?

You can make $15, $20, profit on a t-shirt, $20, $30 profit on a hoodie. But there's one number no one ever talks about when buying a printer. It's what it costs when it isn't printing. >> Because the most expensive printer in your shop isn't the one that cost the most. It's the one that's down when you have 100 t-shirts due tomorrow. >> [music and singing] >> What is up? Welcome back. We know you love to do it build it and make it. >> And we're here to help you sell it. >> We partner with our buddy next door sometimes. He's a large screen printer. He doesn't really take any jobs less than 100. So sometimes he'll throw us his scraps, his 25 and 50 t-shirts. He knows we have a DTF printer. And he doesn't even think it's worth it to go ahead and create screens and unless it's 100 or more. So he throws us his scraps now and then. At last November, middle of crash show season, we have wagons everywhere. It's kind of crazy. We have extra painters in here painting the signs. He comes over like a Thursday. He's like, "Hey, I have a rush order. 25, 50 t-shirts. Can you guys pump those out for me?" >> Would you be able to do it? >> Yeah, and give them to me on Monday. And we're like, "Yeah." >> Yeah, but we got you. No problem. >> Kim's like, "I'll just knock them out on Friday. No problem." >> Mhm. >> Friday mid-afternoon, we get around to it. And it's they're all fuzzy. Every print's fuzzy. Saturday morning, we we come back to it. Everything's fuzzy. The head's getting clogged up. Like the ink's gathering on the heads. Needless to say, we spent all weekend wasting ink, wasting paper, and wasting a ton of time doing research. Come to find out, it's the humidity. So since it dropped below freezing, the humidity in this place got down to 27 and none of the printers seem to want to do their thing. >> If you have any experience with printers, UV printers, DTF printers, you know they're very sensitive to the humidity in the environment. So, it's got to be it's got to have enough moisture that everything for the ink flows appropriately and like it's supposed to. Now, we did not even it just didn't even dawn on us. I mean, we kind of know the humidity thing at that time. >> read I read it on Saturday. It was like could be humidity and I was like >> Nah. Nah, not here. I mean, >> on Reddit thinks it's humidity. >> This room is climate controlled. We're good. Well, that's not the case. When the temperature drops, humidity drops, and it becomes a problem. And that was a learning curve for us. So, >> We ended up getting a gauge and a humidifier. >> Yep. So, we can monitor the humidity and keep the printer running. >> Another lesson that we learned was you can't let the printer sit that long. So, everything dies like December 15th here. Pretty much uh dries up. And then like mid-January, we start getting orders again. And we get an order for another 25 t-shirts. I pop over the printer. I make sure it's nice and humid. I was running like a good 45% humidity in the room. And nothing's printing. I can't I can't get white to come through the head. I'm doing cleaning after cleaning. Finally, we had to basically take it apart and pull the hook up a little syringe to the um I guess all the tubes and pull all of the white ink that that basically solidified in the tubes. And then we had to flush the head. And then, you know, from there we just basically learned that it needs daily maintenance. So, now every day we come in and we do a head cleaning and we run a print. So, we have lots of logos and we can make a t-shirt at any time because every day we print one of our logos. >> Right? If you've seen Kim and Garrett t-shirts in our store, guess what? We got you next-day shipping because I've got tons of DTF prints with our logo on them. >> We had to keep the heads going. We had to keep them lubed. And when we go away for like a week or whatever, we'll tell Tanner, "Hey, go go throw a print at the the apparel printer real quick so the heads don't dry out." >> So, let me explain a little bit more about DTF. DTF is direct-to-film. So, you could think of this as kind of like a special t-shirt sticker. So, the way this works with a DTF printer is it prints the ink and then it prints glue on the back and then you have to heat that glue and then you have a special transfer like this that can be stored and used when you're ready. And then you will take this transfer and actually apply it to a t-shirt like what we have on here today. These are both DTF t-shirts. >> Well, it becomes a heat transfer. >> Yes. And so, let me explain a little bit the various printing technologies that are out there. So, there's screen printing like we talked about with our neighbor next door. He actually uses a screen, runs the ink through a screen, and each color is a different screen. So, there is a larger process to that because each color in your image is requires a screen setup. So, that's a little bit different than a full color print like a DTF printer. DTG is direct-to-garment. So, what's different about DTG is that you have to print directly on a garment. So, what works a little bit better with DTF is that you can take this transfer and actually put it on anything. I could put it on a hat. If I have a t-shirt press, a hat press, I could put it on a camp chair. We did put it on a camp chair once. You could put it on any various shaped things as long as you can apply heat to it, it will transfer to that fabric. Or it could be cotton, polyester, vinyl, it can transfer to almost any kind of material. And then, what makes it different than sublimation is sublimation requires you to have a light colored fabric and it must be a polyester type fabric so that the gases blend with the materials of the fabric. You don't do that for DTF, direct to film. These transfers will apply, like I said, to cotton, polyester, >> uh canvas, >> canvas, uh wood. We've actually applied them to wood, uh to metals. They really do transfer to almost anything because of the glue that's applied to the back. So, I wanted to explain a little bit about the technology that we're talking about. >> When Xcel approached us about sending us the new Apparel Printer Plus, my initial reaction was like, "No, I don't have time to baby sit another machine." >> But they reached out and shared some of the new features of the Apparel Printer Plus and it really did hit the three biggest pain points that we had. So, I had to do a little convincing and I talked Garret into saying, "Yes, we want this new printer and I really want to try it out and I want to see if it can meet our commercial needs. Can we actually produce products that I can use in my business? We had gotten to the point where we had to take DTF prints out of our store because it just didn't feel reliable enough. If a customer ordered, I needed to be able to get those prints printed and shipped within a day or two. And I wasn't confident that I could do that. So, with the new AP Plus, Xcel hit us with solutions to our three main pain points. One, more stable performance. Two, better routine maintenance. And three, smart cycle. >> What actually happens when you become a Maker Place member? First, you get instant access to our monthly library of premium production-ready SVG cut files worth over double the subscription cost. Just download, load into your laser software, and start cutting sellable designs in minutes. Plus, you unlock access to our Make It Mafia community, where you get behind-the-scenes content, topic submissions, and direct support. Add in sitewide discounts on materials and exclusive business training webinars, and it pays for itself. Membership starts at just $5 a month. Tap the link to join the family today at kngmakeit.com. >> Remember the problem with the humidity that we had, and we had to get a sensor and a a whole separate humidifier? Well, xTool's going to put a humidifier inside the machine. >> It now has dual humidity sensors with an automatic onboard humidifier. It maintains a consistent 45% humidity, and it auto adjusts the humidity inside the printer. You don't have to touch it. It's automatically going to adjust the humidity inside the printer based on its sensor readings. And that keeps the print head from drying out and reduces the ink clogs in the lines, so you don't have to pull that ink through the lines when it sits. >> Remember the issue we had when we let the printer sit pretty much all of December and January, and then when we decided to print, everything was clogged, the print head and all the hoses. Well, xTool's going to head and try to solve that issue, too. >> Yes, the AP Plus has an advanced maintenance system. So, they have new advanced wet capping and upgraded ink dampers, which will allow your print head to stay moist for 30 days. And that's huge. So, they give us a little statistics saying that if it's sitting 10 days in standby mode, that is now reducing the use of the maintenance fluid by 75% and the actual ink usage by 80%. So overall, you're saving on inks and you're saving on the maintenance cost, which is pretty exciting because now I feel comfortable leaving it sit if I go on vacation and I come back, I'm not stressed that I have to have somebody run a print while we're out of the office. And if we don't have a job for 30 days, the machine can actually sit there and I'm confident that it's actually going to have a moist print head and the lines aren't going to be clogged when we come back to it. >> We won't have a a 100 t-shirt designs. >> All right. So then we won't have to run a Kimmi Garrett Make It T-Shirt design every day so that my print head keeps running. And actually, I run two at a time. So again, if you want a Kimmi Garrett Make It T-Shirt, just let me know. >> [laughter] >> And my biggest pain point was all of the babysitting. I mean, how many logos do I need? And I always had a syringe at the ready. >> [laughter] >> I didn't know you had those in his pocket. With the new AP Plus, they now have a 24/7 smart cycle maintenance system. Yay! Which does all of the maintenance and monitoring for you. So it's doing it's managing the humidity data for you, usage info, it's letting you know real time what kind of ink levels that you have. It does the automated wet capping, ink circulation, the automated cleanings, the moisture fluid replenishment, all of that in an automated smart cycle process. And you can monitor all of that using the XTool app on your phone. So as long as you're in the same network, it will let you know, "Hey, your ink levels are low." or any kind of issue that it runs into. You're going to get real time notifications if there's an issue with your print anywhere in your our building, we can kind of I an eye on what's happening with our prints. Which is great if you're running running a hundred prints, you go do something else and you come back and you realize, "Oh, it jammed after print number three." And you waited 30 minutes and you didn't even know that. I mean, ask me how I know. >> Now, if you're thinking, "Great, I just bought the printer 6 months ago. Now they want me to buy a new printer." Don't worry. Don't worry. If you're one of the OGs, they got you. They're not going to leave you hanging. They have a free upgrade kit for you. >> With this new upgrade kit, you actually get the onboard humidifier and upgraded dampers. Now, with the onboard humidifier, it will adjust the humidity inside the printer and keep it at that optimal 45% humidity. Now, what it doesn't do with the AP Plus, it's integrated in and it's using that smart cycle maintenance to monitor it for you. But for the OG users, you will have to keep an eye on the humidity in the room, but you won't have to buy a separate humidifier. It'll auto- automatically produce that humidity by turning it on and running the humidifier inside the machine. It actually sits in the machine. It also has a software upgrade to support the better circulation and wet capping. So, it's not a smart cycle where it's running the full cycle for you, but it does have the upgraded dampers, the better circulation, and the wet capping all with the upgraded software. With the new apparel printer plus, it's not about improved print quality. It's still a great print. It's about better stability, better maintenance so that you can run a better, more consistent business. Now, if you don't have a DTF printer and you want to get into apparel printing or really printing on just about anything with a DTF print, you can follow our links down below. If you're an existing apparel printer user, you can follow the links below to get your upgrade kit. >> And otherwise, I'm about out of time. I don't have to go do any maintenance. I don't know what I'm going to do. But a big thanks to the Maker Mafia. That is the best mafia. That is our membership area over on g make it dot com. And if you're not a member yet, you should check it out. It's not just about the files, it's about business content, behind the scenes, zoom calls. There's just so much more. >> And the whole maker community is really about the family. >> It's about the family.