Costs of maintaining colour laser printers

  • Thread starter Peter Marquis-Kyle
  • Start date
P

Peter Marquis-Kyle

I run a one-person consulting business, and I produce reports for my
clients. These are carefully designed documents incorporating line
drawings and photographic images.

Up to now I have used monochrome laser printers, but I'm interested in
changing to colour laser. I'd like the capacity to print on A3 paper
(that's about 12 by 17 inches if you are American), something that only
comes with printers that are designed for heavy use -- printers that
have very large toner cartridges.

I print only a few hundred pages a month. Would the consumables in a
high-capacity colour laser printer spoil before I use them up? Should I
abandon the idea of a large format printer, and look at smaller machines
instead?

Peter Marquis-Kyle
 
M

Martin

I run a one-person consulting business, and I produce reports for my
clients. These are carefully designed documents incorporating line
drawings and photographic images.

Up to now I have used monochrome laser printers, but I'm interested in
changing to colour laser. I'd like the capacity to print on A3 paper
(that's about 12 by 17 inches if you are American), something that only
comes with printers that are designed for heavy use -- printers that
have very large toner cartridges.

I print only a few hundred pages a month. Would the consumables in a
high-capacity colour laser printer spoil before I use them up? Should I
abandon the idea of a large format printer, and look at smaller machines
instead?

Peter Marquis-Kyle


You could consider going with a large format inkjet like the Epson
2200 or 2400. These use pigment inks that are water fast and will
handle A3 sizes.. The detail on the printers is also photo quality so
you're not going to lose anything on presentation.. You might even
improve it :)

Consumables for the Epson branded cartridges are expensive so I'd
recommend going for a refillable cartridge or CIS (Continuous Ink
Supply) system to keep the costs down.

All in all though I suspect a colour Laser A3 would kill you in the
cost area...


The only down side with an inkjet is that you do need to use it to
keep the nozzles from clogging, but in all honesty if you take the
time to sort out a decent cartridge or ink supplier and set things up
properly you shouldn't have any problems at all..


Hope that helps

Martin
 
P

Peter Marquis-Kyle

Martin wrote, in response to my question:
You could consider going with a large format inkjet like the Epson
2200 or 2400. These use pigment inks that are water fast and will
handle A3 sizes.. The detail on the printers is also photo quality so
you're not going to lose anything on presentation.. You might even
improve it :)

Consumables for the Epson branded cartridges are expensive so I'd
recommend going for a refillable cartridge or CIS (Continuous Ink
Supply) system to keep the costs down.

All in all though I suspect a colour Laser A3 would kill you in the
cost area...


The only down side with an inkjet is that you do need to use it to
keep the nozzles from clogging, but in all honesty if you take the
time to sort out a decent cartridge or ink supplier and set things up
properly you shouldn't have any problems at all..

Thanks for those suggestions, Martin.

I already use a couple of A3+ Epson 1160 printers equipped with pigment
inks (one colour, the other quad grey). With continuous ink systems or
refillable cartridges ink costs are reasonable and the printers are
pretty reliable. They do beautiful photographic output, but only on
heavy specially coated paper. They don't handle plain bond paper very
well, as laser printers do.

Cheers

Peter Marquis-Kyle
 
M

me

Peter said:
I run a one-person consulting business, and I produce reports for my
clients. These are carefully designed documents incorporating line
drawings and photographic images.

Up to now I have used monochrome laser printers, but I'm interested in
changing to colour laser. I'd like the capacity to print on A3 paper
(that's about 12 by 17 inches if you are American), something that only
comes with printers that are designed for heavy use -- printers that
have very large toner cartridges.

I print only a few hundred pages a month. Would the consumables in a
high-capacity colour laser printer spoil before I use them up? Should I
abandon the idea of a large format printer, and look at smaller
machines instead?

I'm not sure its worth it at the level of only a few hundred pages a
month. The cheapest A3 colour laser I've noticed is about £1800 plus
vat, which is a lot to recoup for that sort of printing. You might do
better with the OKI C3xxx which you can get for £200 including vat, I
wouldn't have thought its worth paying for an A3 machine unless you
really want/need to, or if you are doing at least 1500/2000 pages a
month.
 
A

Arthur Entlich

The consumables used in a color laser printer are quite stable. I don't
think there is any problem with slow use over several years.

Art
 

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