Printer Ink

[coffeeman]

How can one print advertising papers the cheapest way? Want to do on computer; 200 about once a month. Will be changed monthly. It seems if one wants to use traditional computer printer the ink will kill us. I just cant understand why a printer isn't made that has bottles we can fill?

Ideas welcome.

Cheers...Coffeeman

 

[Lloyd_E]

The profit is on the ink. Printers are cheap... sometimes it is actually cheaper to buy a new printer with ink than to purchase the ink tanks. Your best bet is to find a design/print/service bureau with a digital printer/output device. Because most print shops do volume they can give you a better price. Essentially you can email or upload the file to their email or ftp site and pick the job up later. If you are doing this monthly you have room to negotiate a better price over a 12 month period - return customer.

Average cost of home office printer per 8.5x11 sheet - colour - is about $.65 per sheet. If you are doing 200 a month that is about $130. I would sub the job out. You can probably get prints as low as 15 to 25 cents each depending on time frame and turn a round.

You can buy kits at Stable, Costco etc that will refill some ink tanks. Also there are some shops that refill tanks cheaper than buying new. But I do believe you best $$$ would be to sub the job out.

Good Luck...


PS: I once figured out the cost of ink per gallon based on the small tanks - it worked out to be close to $3200 per gallon....
128 ounces = 1 gallon: 128 x $25.00 = $3200.00

 

[brin]

How can one print advertising papers the cheapest way? Want to do on computer; 200 about once a month. Will be changed monthly. It seems if one wants to use traditional computer printer the ink will kill us. I just cant understand why a printer isn't made that has bottles we can fill?

Ideas welcome.

Cheers...Coffeeman

We refill our own printer ink cartridges...just google refilling printer ink and also Google Printer Ink refills and you will see how to do it and all that is available to do it cheap...cheap..

 

[aczlan]

Look into getting a printer with ink tanks instead of ink cartridges. Some of (all of?) the Canon Pixma line of printers are setup that way. Then you can get ink tanks which are MUCH cheaper and hold 100x more ink than a ink cartridge. Another benefit is that there is one tank per color, so if you have a run one month that has a lot of red in it, you will just need to replace the red tank, rather than the color ink cartridge.

Edit: here is a set of tanks http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300317766430 $16 for a set of 280 page rated color tanks and a 650 page rated black tank
Aaron Z

 

[tallyho8]

I print hundreds of pages monthly on my Epson printer. Epson ink cartridges at the stores sell for about $25 each. I buy generic ink cartridges on ebay for about $1 each and never have a problem.

My printing cost is about $1 a month.

 

[dfkrug]

It seems if one wants to use traditional computer printer the ink will kill us.

It sounds like you have not considered a laser printer. You can buy one for
under $100, and your cost/page is very low. I refill my own cartridges, but
rarely need to as I do not print often. I have had HP and Samsung.

You also did not mention color or B&W. If you must have color and there
are no photos, consider a color laser printer....they can be bought for
under $250 and cost/page is still less than inkjet. (They do not do photos
well, however.)

 

[thatguy]

You may want to consider creating them on the computer but having a print shop print them for you. You could give it to them via email/cd/dvd/usb jump drive..

I second the idea of using the toner printers.. I have an HP 4in1 work printer that is very nice... They are a little more expensive than the inkjets, but will save you money in the long run

IF you use an inkjet printer tell me which brand so I can buy their stock.. lol

Brian

 

[WVBill]

I'll add a vote for a laser printer.

When I used to do the quarterly newsletter for my wife's Quilt Shop, I used a Brother laser printer that has a duplexer. I refilled the toner cartridges with bulk toner bought on the internet. The duplexer let me automatically print on both sides of the paper, saving on paper.

The newsletter was usually four to five double-sided pages.

We mailed out the newsletter so I used endicia.com to automatically print the address and postage on the last page of the newsletter so the "only" manual part of the process was stapling, folding and sealing shut. We mailed about 400 newsletters quarterly.

 

[jinman]

Find a printing service that does print on demand (POD) using a DocuTech or similar printer. If black and white will do, the suggestion of a laser printer is easily the best solution. I'm not sure, but you might even check with a Kinkos to see what their prices are. Printing color for yourself in quantity is a very expensive process.

 

[coffeeman]

Good Luck...


PS: I once figured out the cost of ink per gallon based on the small tanks - it worked out to be close to $3200 per gallon....
128 ounces = 1 gallon: 128 x $25.00 = $3200.00

That's interesting. I wonder.....if Tony Soprano wanted to make such a profit, wouldn't the Feds put him in jail?

Coffeeman

 

[coffeeman]

It sounds like you have not considered a laser printer. You can buy one for
under $100, and your cost/page is very low. I refill my own cartridges, but
rarely need to as I do not print often. I have had HP and Samsung.

You also did not mention color or B&W. If you must have color and there
are no photos, consider a color laser printer....they can be bought for
under $250 and cost/page is still less than inkjet. (They do not do photos
well, however.)

I have in offices close to me 3 lazer printers; HPCP 1215 and CM1015; both color. I have one hp lazer 1300 black only. This one is old and works well. If ink is low we can shake the toner cartridge and it prints more. The newer printers just shut down even if just one color is down. One of the color ones will let you print in black only if you change the preferences in printer. It's just this feeling of being ripped off every time I turn around. The worst part is they don't even rip you with a smile because we don't deal with people anymore. Sometime I wish for the good old days of dot matrix printing. In fact I have a few Epson dot matrix printers stored somewhere. I wonder if they will easily work on new computers. Those ribbons printed one color invoices cheaply. At least, that's the way I remember it.

Cheers....Coffeeman

 

[coffeeman]

I print hundreds of pages monthly on my Epson printer. Epson ink cartridges at the stores sell for about $25 each. I buy generic ink cartridges on ebay for about $1 each and never have a problem.

My printing cost is about $1 a month.

Are you refering to a dot matrix or a newer printer? The generic ink cartridges are what makes me think it not an impact printer. Do you have some suggestions on model numbers. I suspect many of us here (not me) could make a printer that would have cheap ink. However, if we did and it took off the big guys would crush us like a bug.

Cheers...Coffeeman

 

[milkman]

Might be interested in something like Continuous ink system,Finger Pulse Oximeter,Fetal Doppler Several brand of printers will accept this system. I use an Epson inkjet and have found that the compatible refilled cartridges are reasonable and have not had a problem with them in my printer. The continuous ink system is still cheaper to use than the refilled cartridges when printing lots of color pages.

 

[tallyho8]

Are you refering to a dot matrix or a newer printer? The generic ink cartridges are what makes me think it not an impact printer. Do you have some suggestions on model numbers. I suspect many of us here (not me) could make a printer that would have cheap ink. However, if we did and it took off the big guys would crush us like a bug.

Cheers...Coffeeman

I have 2 color inkjet printers. An Epson 400 and an Epson 880. They both work great on cheap generic cartridges and print good photos. The 400 is older and slower but has great paper handling abilities so I still use it some with envelopes and card stock.

Since Epson comes out with many new models every year, these aren't sold new anymore but you could find a good used one on ebay or you can see which cheap ink cartridges are for sale on ebay and buy a new printer that uses them.

The printer manufacturers have been trying to stop the use of generic ink but have not been able to do so yet.

 

[jwstewar]

We have had 2 HP color lasers. First one was a 2605 DN. It did a good job on printing, only thing I didn't like about it was the straight paper path only held one piece of paper at a time. Once we moved into the new house, we bought another HP color laser. It is also a DN model, but I can't remember the model right now, but I know we upgraded so its straight path feeder held more paper. It has been a great machine. I think we paid around $500 for it. We have had it about 18 months. So far the toner cartridges are only down maybe 30%. The kids print a lot of color pictures. I know my daughter had a sleepover this past Sunday. Those kids must have printed 150 pages of pictures.

I just looked at our current color laser, it is an HP Color LaserJet 3600 DN.

 

[RoyJackson]

I have two Brother printers...both LASER. One is B&W, the other color.
But if I have a big printing job, I send to work to Print-O-Stat. It's cheaper...

 

[Luremaker]

You may want to up the monthly quantity to 1000 and have it printed by one of the on-line offset printers. I use one in Brampton (near Toronto) and they will print 1000 8-1/2 x 11 full color flyers shipped to my door for under $50.00. The quality is much higher than any inkjet printer.

 

[Lloyd_E]

Luremaker,

Can you email me the info for the printer you use. Even if shipping is a hundred bucks - no one can match that price locally. I can save clients lots of money...

Thanks.

Lloyd