The reason I bought the DTG Viper was that it was supposed to be able to print 70 t-shirts an hour. That was one giant lie. If I was lucky I could get 12 done in an hour, and that was if the DTG Viper didn't break down.
This machine was broken more than not. When it first showed up it looked good but that was before it was turned on. The technician that was sent to train me and setup the machine could not line up the platens. when printing the color ink didn't cover the first pass of white ink.
The print head that came with the machine was defective and had to be replaced right off the bat. The tech finally had to leave when he was told to spend no more time at my location.
After he left another tech was sent to do more repairs. The printer still didn't work correctly. There were many calls to Mesa Distributors with little response. My husband asked the sales manager if it was too much to ask of a $20,000 printer to be able to print on a $2 t-shirt. Finally a second machine was sent to replace the broken one.
When the second machine came I could tell right away that it was probably used. My fears were well founded. This "new" machine quickly started doing the same things as the first. Here is a list of problems that I had.
Loose belt, plugged ink lines, broken print head, bad mother board, would not recognize ink cartridges, missing bulk ink stoppers, countless errors on the LCD panel, the need to do power cleaning constantly, shadowing on the shirts, start and stop on the print process (that ruins the shirt), feeds the wrong direction
These problems didn't happen just once the print head was replaced several times. The power cleaning takes a lot of ink it was to be done every 2 weeks I was doing it 2 times a day minimum.
I can't tell you how much money I have lost to this POS. My customers are leaving and I'm stuck with a 400 pound paper weight that is just collecting dust because I can't use it and I can't get my money back.
If you are thinking of buying a direct to garment printer I would stay clear of the DTG Viper, unless you like wasting money and time and loosing customers!