A3 Laser Colour Printer (FAST RESPONSE NEEDED)

[grim_reefer]

a question to eric or anyone else, if they can help please

what is/are the cheapest make (and model) of A3 LaserJet for cost of printing per page? not initial outlay, so if the toners are more expensive, this is okay - so long as the cost per printing page is cheapest (toner prints more pages) thanx :)

[-pops-]

I'll phone Eric later and ask his opinion.

What I can say from my own experience, though, is that the colour laser printing cost per page can be a quarter or less than its inkjet equivalent. There is a proviso - I don't think the colour rendering is as good as a high quality inkjet, especially one of the photo quality ones.

Also, there isn't the same range of papers available to go through a laser printer as there is for inkjets e.g. the traditional type photo papers are rare or non-existent for the smaller user.

[grim_reefer]

thanks pops

a few other things then (aswell as the chespest (A3) laserjet manufacturer/model for cost per printing a page?)..

are there ANY that allow other types of paper (e.g. photo paper) ?? any idea which ... ?

and also what is a high quality (A4) colourjet which takes any paper, but again is cheapest for printing per page..?

thans again pops (and eric)

[-pops-]

Sorry, Eric's not been available much this week but he's here tomorrow so I'll get him to write something.

[grim_reefer]

thanx very much :D

i dont know if hed also know the cost of printing per colour page on a Lexmark X83 :unsure: (as we already have one of them)

[-pops-]

Hello grim_reefer, Eric here.

Sorry for not responding sooner, very busy last week.

Right, to work.

1. Low cost colour lasers A3 size. These are a bit few and far between. Xerox do them starting at about £5,000 + VAT and that's the cheapest. Samsung do them as well. I'll check around about pricing but they will no doubt be a lot less. Regarding quality, Xerox wil most likely be the best but don't dismiss Samsung. We have had very low cost Samsung ML21210 B/W printers working like the clappers as general purpose office printers for more than two years now and they're still going strong. For my money, though, I'd go for an Epson. They do an Acculaser for about £5K. I've seen it demonstrated and it's impressive.

2. Running costs. This is a bit of a poser for me as, frankly, I have no idea. We don't use A3 lasers at all, preferring commercial Epson inkjets such as the Stylus Color 1600 and Stylus Pro 10600 which takes 44 inch paper and the Stylus Color 3000 which is for A2 papers. These are normally used for proofing and any bulk printing of large sizes is contracted out.

If I could give a bit of advice. As you are looking more to a commercial basis for what you are doing, try and forget about the run of the mill SOHO type machines and look at commercial ones.

I'm a fan of Epson products as you may have noticed, not least in that they have a good range of machines and they are always willing to arrange demonstrations at one of their dealerships or at some premises where one of their machines is installed. They are also best placed to tell you about running costs and cost per page - in realistic terms rather than the unbelievable figures that are issued with domestic machines.

Have a look at Epson's corporate pages http://www.epson.co.uk/corpprod/ and give them a call :)

Good luck

Eric

[grim_reefer]

no problem eric and thanx for the help, been very busy myself this last week, working day and night seven days a week!!...

has the forums been down recently? ive been trying to post for ages but never could get the site to load..

anyway, Samsung told me that they do not produce any A3-size colour laser printers

i want to totally avoid any Lexmark products as these are unreliable and usually malfunction

that leaves Epson, Xerox, HP, Brother and Canon that i have found to produce them so far (i think).. i havent been in direct contact with Epson yet, but have emailed them.

about running costs - while Epson will give more accuracte figures; i would still think theyd want to promote their products over other manufacturers's? how would i find running costs for the other companies's poroducts..

at the end of the day if i could find out the minimum number of pages one (of each type of) toner is supposed to or will print - i can do the maths myself, at least to find out the most cost-effective manufacturer - from there i may need more specific detail and other accurate figures like how changing the print quality affects amount of ink used

[grim_reefer]

epson a3 printer

this has recently come on to eBay, looks good - from what ive read in the details, but i need a more experienced opinion?

but where we will get the money in the last 4 days is a problem..

our current printer is giving us hell - its a Sh*tmark.. i mean Lexmark X83 and is malfunctioning more than before.. it wont finish printing ANY full-page colour images - it just stops at a random point during the printing with "System Error" on the printer's display.. and then eventually changes to "Never Error" :blink: and says to press the Power Key.. and so the page comes out and is just wasting that particular type of paper we are trying to print on and wasting ink and time :censored:

EDIT:

even though this seemed like a very good deal (especially as it is WITH some (half-full) toners - i suppose it doesnt matter now, because we dont even know if we will have any business or customers yet :unsure: and we cant print any more examples of our work now either...

hopefully another epson printer at a good price with toners will appear on eBay again, once we have potential/guaranteed customers, and the money to purchase it :mellow:

[grim_reefer]

hi, if eric is available to give advice that would be great.. nonetheless..

i wondered what kind of quantities does it become cheaper for you to contract work out to a professional printers with lithograph/printing presses.

we have found that with our current hardware - we can print A4 single-side glossed fullcolour for no more than approx. 25p - 40p, depending on paperweight... as for double-sided, we are unsure as of yet. and we have no idea for A3 size yet. but from what we have so far, at these kind of prices for us to print, what quantities would make it cheaper to use the pro-printers?

also, can you supply your own printing-press paper to a printers to bring down the cost?

cheers :)

[-pops-]

Hello grim_reefer

Eric is coming down tomorrow evening. I'll ask him to have a look here.

[grim_reefer]

thanx pops

[-pops-]

Hello, Eric here.

Regarding contracting out, we would not consider printing more than one ream 4 colour A4. It is very rare for us to even consider quantities like this these days.

Up to about 10 reams we would use a print shop and again, our business is of a size that this is not really viable now.

Printing costs come very much down to the relationship between you and your printer - more specifically how much printing he sees coming his way in the future. I can't give any meaningful figures as print runs that we contract quite often run into millions - the cost per sheet is then very cheap..

With suppying your own print stock, this depends on what it is. If you want you work done on hand-made laid cotton or something like that then yes, supply your own. Otherwise, if you're using run of the mill stock then it is far cheaper for your printer to get it, possibly in rolls for a large quantity, and then let him do all the manhandling and trimming - he'll make a better job than you or I could :)

In short, apart from what comes next, almost all the printing we do in house is proofing unless there is some special limited issue stuff of less than 500.

As a house speciality - and where most of our ink is used - is very large format photographs on heavy, coated stock for shop windows, hotel foyers, car dealers etc. Some of these can take half a day to print each one and consequently they are VERY expensive especially as we have very strict visual examination and control of each print made. These are not practical or economical being done by a printers because of the small run (1 - 10) and the high quality needed.

Hope this helps you

Best wishes

Eric

[moon]

From the small business perspective (two art galleries) we've used HP deskjets since we started . The original A3 printer (1120C) has been working almost daily since 1999. It cost around £250 then and the small-run work, photo manipulations , restorations etc. has been very profitable over and above the cost of cartridges.

Our back-up A3 printer cost £450 in 2001 ( CP1700d) and we use that for double-sided stuff, brochures, in-house gallery programmes etc. The colours are individual cartridges, which saves on ink cost, and the print-heads can be replaced at any time. ( HP cartridges generally have an inbuilt print-head) We get our local old-fashioned printer to cut a range of papers to size, which saves a fortune, and give him any long-run work which turns up.

So, a small business can easily run itself and make a good profit with a couple of decent deskjets.

Edit; All of the large-run quality work goes to Giclee printers now anyway so there's a niche for small-run stuff with which Giclee printers can't compete. Also, colour-fast inks have turned deskjet output into a quality product.