What's a good color laser printer for technical drawings?

[genericaudioperson]

Hello,

I am looking to buy a color laser printer in the $500-2000 range to
print technical drawings. Could someone recommend a model that
prints
sharp line art and fonts, and also does automatic two-sided printing?


1)The drawings will be black and white, line art, fonts, etc.
2) Color will be used sometimes, but doesn't need to be "ultimate"
quality
3) Want the black and white lines to be really sharp
4) Don't want spurious printer spray dots (needs to be very "clean")
5) Does not need to be super fast (anything 8 pages per minute or
higher for basic black and white printing is fine)
6) Want the black ink printing to be dark and sharp
7) Want the cost-per-page of priting to be competitive, but doesn't
have to be the lowest (most seem to be about $.03 per page for
black and white printing that covers 5% of the page)
8) Reliability very important
9) Space, noise and power consumption are not priorities
10) very important to print two-sided without having to re-feed the
paper
11) 8.5x11 printing only, no need for oversized paper or cardstock
12) would prefer the option of a large capacity paper tray, but not
necessary


Thanks for any suggestions. It's tough to guess at this stuff.

 

[Jerry1111]

1)The drawings will be black and white, line art, fonts, etc.

We're using our Oki C5100 for these tasks.

2) Color will be used sometimes, but doesn't need to be "ultimate"
quality
3) Want the black and white lines to be really sharp

Quality is very good from my printer.

4) Don't want spurious printer spray dots (needs to be very "clean")

Not a single one.

5) Does not need to be super fast (anything 8 pages per minute or
higher for basic black and white printing is fine)

About 8ppm.

6) Want the black ink printing to be dark and sharp
7) Want the cost-per-page of priting to be competitive, but doesn't
have to be the lowest (most seem to be about $.03 per page for
black and white printing that covers 5% of the page)

No idea about cost-per-page ;-)

8) Reliability very important

Not a single problem (currently 35k pages).

9) Space, noise and power consumption are not priorities
10) very important to print two-sided without having to re-feed the
paper

Duplexer ~100GBP.

11) 8.5x11 printing only, no need for oversized paper or cardstock

Grr... americans ;-)
No idea how much it is, but ours is A4 printer.

12) would prefer the option of a large capacity paper tray, but not
necessary


Thanks for any suggestions. It's tough to guess at this stuff.

After having some HP color laser (don't remember the number, but it was
printing 3 or 4 times to get one color page) I'm more than happy (knock,
knock( with Oki.

 

[Richard Steinfeld]

We're using our Oki C5100 for these tasks. ....

After having some HP color laser (don't remember the number, but it was
printing 3 or 4 times to get one color page) I'm more than happy (knock,
knock( with Oki.

Oki's technology has been virtually unique in the marketplace (I'm only
aware of one other company, TI, trying it for their printers). Okidata's
printers are identical to laser printers with one exception: the
intricate, high-precision, mechanical laser engine is replaced with a
fixed strip of teentsy LEDs. This eliminates all the moving parts that
were formerly required to create the image on the printer's drum. I
think that it's a better mousetrap: there's an awful lot less to go
wrong with this design. Note that I'm not saying that laser printers
aren't reliable: they've been very good.

I've owned two Oki LED printers. The first one was a transitional
"green" technology that backfired terribly for customers. To their
credit, they were on the stick as a leader in low-charge corona to knock
down the ozone output of Xerography-based printers (an often overlooked
nasty of laser printers). But unfortunately, with their social
consciousness, their first round of "green" drums had a nasty habit of
self-destructing. Oki got it right in the next round. To their credit,
the company replaced my troublesome printer at their expense seven years
later with a reliable refurb. It's been perfect ever since. I'm talking
black now. I've found the price for my black toner to be reasonable at
discount, and have had no need to even think of buying
aftermarket-loaded cartridges or filling my own.

Replacement drums seem expensive to me, but their page capacity is high.
If I needed a color machine for serious output, I'd definitely look at
Oki's wares.

 

[genericaudioperson]

Thanks for the suggestions. I saw an Oki in the store. It looked
like it had a good design concept, but the black text & lines didn't
look as sharp as I need, but that might have been a different model.
I'll have to look for the C5100.

A4/8.5x11 same idea. Basically, don't need 11x17 or 11x14, or post
cards, etc.

 

[Jerry1111]

Thanks for the suggestions. I saw an Oki in the store. It looked
like it had a good design concept, but the black text & lines didn't
look as sharp as I need, but that might have been a different model.
I'll have to look for the C5100.

I _think_ all the C5100/5200/5300 series are having the same printing
engine (they all take the same toner cartridges).
Another thing: in each toner box there's a lens cleaning tissue - never
bothered to use it ;-)

What you might want to do - calculate the TCO based on OEM pricing for
toners and drums. I've no idea how much it is (well... it's a company
printer after all ;-) )

 

[genericaudioperson]

Thanks, Jerry.

I believe Oki has a good cost per page spec. I remember pricing their
consumables on the internet, dividing cost/page count, etc.

 

[Richard Steinfeld]

Thanks, Jerry.

I believe Oki has a good cost per page spec. I remember pricing their
consumables on the internet, dividing cost/page count, etc.

The light printing that you observed may have been due to a simple
adjustment, like the default density setting.

Regarding the cost of consumables, I bought my last round of OE toner
cartridges on-line at a price so low that there was no point in
considering aftermarket refills or filling them myself. I don't see why
one should anticipate the feeding cost at manufacturer's list price.

One thing to be concerned about, however, is drum life and drum cost.
For example, with the unfortunate case of my first Okidata printer
(410/PS), the cost per printed page was 16 cents when the cost of the
drum was factored in (unacceptable). The drums for my former and current
OKI printers (not the same drum!) run around $165 each. So, how much
life you're going to get could be important, and I'd look into the page
count and under what conditions quite carefully.

I do clean the LED strip with each toner change. The provided pad is
soaked in plain old isopropyl alcohol. Here in California, I trust the
70% "Rubbing Alcohol" to be pure (we've had discussions in audio forums
about this). I do remove a little toner from the strip at times.

Sometimes, OKI support can drive me crazy. Sometimes it's been good. But
I was certainly impressed when they offered to replace my printer so
long after the warranty had run out -- that's very responsible. They
didn't "admit guilt." I'd long abandoned the absurd 410; it was sitting
in a box in the back yard, ready for a trip to the dump. I'd replaced it
with an ancient HP workhorse. And I thought I'd send them a nasty
letter. And they responded right!

Other people had felt ripped off by the same printer series and related
fax machines. I think that almost all of them wound up in the garbage in
short order, after they discovered that their drums wouldn't even last a
year. In my case, the original drum was bad right out of the box, and
the warranty-replaced drum lasted about 9 months. But I've been using
the replacement printer for over four years now on its original drum --
no problems. So, I've come to like the printer and, mostly, the company,
and especially this technology.

Richard

 

[Jerry1111]

One thing to be concerned about, however, is drum life and drum cost.

Not in C5100. The drum cost is lower than the OEM toner (AFAIR drums are
+/- 60GBP). The drum lasts for many toners (no idea how much, but now
it's been 5 weeks with a message 'replace K drum' and no signs of any
bad printing).