When establishing a screen printing and embroidery facility one has to
weigh the options of buying new equipment or used? Even the software
used for graphic design can run into thousands of dollars every year
just for the latest and greatest upgrades. Brand new automated
printing devices can range from $20,000 upwards to $1 million in
overhead. If you’re entertaining the thought of going digital, you are
probably looking at an investment upwards of $15,000 just to get the
machine into your shop initially. This does not include updating the
software that runs the machine annually and replacing moving parts
that will wear out in time.

Incurring the overhead of costly service contracts is just adding fuel
to the costly overhead fire. But not having one, is like playing
Russian roulette. It’s not a matter of if my machine is going to wear
out, but it’s more like when is my machine going to wear out. It’s
only a matter of time. The developers of new equipment produce
equipment with eventual planed inefficiency in mind. They know how
many working hours an average machine will run efficiently before
things will inevitably start to wear out. In this challenging economy,
one needs to find a way to get every possible advantage that he or she
can get. A business owner can often find this advantage and gain this
edge by obtaining used equipment.

With the advantages that Websites like Craigslist has offered, it’s as
easy as finding a great deal from your kitchen table while shopping in
your socks and underwear.

The market is flooded with custom embroidery equipment and custom
T-shirt printing presses that young companies bought. When just
starting out, they made the mistake of incurring huge overhead on new
equipment before they had an established customer base to sustain such
an investment.

A well maintained automated screen printing press can be obtained for
a small fraction of what it would cost to buy a new one.

Because technology is changing so rapidly you could go out and spend a
small fortune on a brand-new digital press and within two years it
could be considered old technology.

If you go out and buy a used digital press, you will probably start
out a couple generations behind. But because that machine has already
depreciated, you will not have so much money invested in the equipment.