Choosing a machine

Buy for the volume you will have in a year

The most common expensive mistake is buying a desktop unit for a business that outgrows it in six months — then buying again. The second most common is buying a production machine to print ten shirts a week.

A small clothing business owner working with stock

By volume

Three broad classes of machine

Widths and head counts vary by manufacturer, but the shape of the decision does not.

Desktop / A3

Roughly 30cm wide, often a converted desktop chassis with a separate manual shaker. Fine for a few garments a day and a low entry cost, but manual powdering is slow and messy at any volume.

Roll-fed 60cm

The workhorse class. Roll film, integrated or bolt-on shaker-oven, two or more heads. This is where most growing garment decorators land.

Production 60cm+

Multiple heads, integrated shaker, continuous white circulation and higher duty cycles. Justified by throughput and uptime, not by print quality alone.

What to actually compare

The spec lines that matter

Sales sheets lead with print speed. In daily use, these decide whether you enjoy owning the machine.

Spec	Why it matters
White ink circulation	Pigment settles. Machines that continuously circulate white ink clog far less and recover faster after a weekend.
Head configuration	More heads mean speed, but also more to maintain and more to replace. Match it to real throughput.
Integrated vs separate shaker	Integrated is cleaner, faster and takes the human error out of powdering. Separate is cheaper and takes more space and attention.
RIP software	The white underbase is generated here. A poor RIP produces halos and heavy hand-feel no matter how good the printer is.
Head availability and cost	Print heads are consumable. Find out the price and lead time before you buy, not after a failure.
Support and spares in the UK	A machine down for a fortnight waiting on a part overseas costs more than the price difference that tempted you.

Specific models and prices

TODO: confirm which machines are supplied and at what price — deliberately not listed until confirmed, rather than publishing a spec or figure that turns out to be wrong.