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Recommendations for High Volume Color Laser Printers?
dughutch asks: "My church currently uses a small business color laser printer (Minolta 2200), but alas, it can not handle the load of our growing congregation. We are looking at buying a higher volume color laser printer and I wanted to ask the Slashdot readers for any and all information on possible solutions relating to this question, including, but not limited to: cost, volume, repairs, and outsourcing?"
fp
Why dont you send a prayer and god will give you advice - or even a color laser printer!
*grin*
Why not inkjet? Epson puts out a pretty good one. Also, would it be better to go to places like Kinko's with a single color master? IIRC, color laser printers simply aren't cheap, and if it's a growing congregation, you can maybe get one on an NPO program, but again, *color laser*?
This sig no verb.
High volume Color Laser printers don't exist. They are instead called Networked Color Copiers. But forget cheap, you're looking at $16K entry, that will get you around 20ppm.
I thought this thread was gonna be COOL
:-(
then I saw the word "Printer" on the end.
Should be able to get off quite a few ppm of your new kids comic, "Why Dinosaurs Never Existed" with one of those bad boys!
All things in moderation; including moderation
Can you give a better definition of what you mean by high volume.
500 flyers for the sunday service each week
or
10,000 11x17 double-sided brochures every week.
Do you have any special requirements?
Must print on paper type ______.
Must handle these sizes?
Doublesided printing in single pass?
Do you care: postscript/PCL?
A little more info would be helpful.
*ahem* I guess he forgot to mention his 'church' is the "Church of Scientology" and they want to produce even more of those handouts to convince us to join their cult ;-)
If you're printing a lot of stuff that isn't time-sensitive(i.e., you don't need it RIGHT THIS SECOND), why don't you go with a professional printing house?
I think you'd probably have a lot less hassle with that route than with trying to find, purchase, install and support a color laser printer.
Why the *FUCK* should *YOU* get a colour laser printer?
You should donate the money to a third world country, shouldn't you?
You can make do perfectly well with a B&W laser - you can probably even get one or two donated to you by your congregation.
All things in moderation; including moderation
Ask that Jacob guy about getting color for free!
I've got an older 750N, works like a champ, cost $1400 - the toner cartridges are a bit pricey (250 each) but they last a pretty good while. Has linux support, internet printing etc.
Here is what they currently have on sale.
I would suggest to go see a professional. Probably cheaper and less hassel
Pray to Gawd for your scroll printing purposes
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
They probably have gold plated bathroom sinks in this Church.
And show good stewardship of your congregation's money. If you have so much money that you *need* to spend it on something, open a soup kitchen.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
...would probably be about 200 offshore indian children with crayons working for cheap in an old warehouse.
Outsource, outsource
No I didnt spell check this post...
USE the BLOOD of CHRIST as your red ink. (This is especially appealing to Muslim "churches" aka terrorist covens).
... Take that black shit out of the incense ball and mix it with water.
USE the BLUE BALLS of CHURCH BOYS everywhere for your blue ink.
Use the URINE the HIPPES dunk the cross in to at art exhibitions for the YELLOW INK.
and finally, for BLACK INK
MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
And to the stupid cult fucker who asked this question, his "growing congregation.." Sounds like cultist propaganda.
Religion is a cult, and your willingness to mold God in your image and your line of thinking is blasphemy. A puny human mind has no ability to characterize GOD, and you motherfuckers do it and that is HYBRIS.
Check out the following website:
FreeColorPrinters
The fraternity that I am in has been using this service for the past 3 years (that is how long the contract lasts); the printer lease runs out in a week (the printer is yours to keep after the lease expires). We have a Phaser 850DP, and I believe the current model is a Phaser 8200, which are both color wax transfer printers - check out this link for the specs:
Phaser 8200 Specs
The only thing you have to do is print the quota (if some guys living in a dorm can do it, I am sure you can as well), and buy your ink from them (all black ink is free; color ink is kind of expensive, but it is worth it for the free printer). Also included is an on-site service agreement for the length of the 3 year lease.
I would definitely recommend this service, especially for small organizations. Good luck with finding one for the church!
A computer is a valuable tool, so use it and stop whining.
I don't know what you mean when you say high volume, but...
If you're not having a speed of printing issue, but are having trouble with the printer jamming, what you should look into is getting a good service contract. No matter what kind of "high volume" printer you get, excessive printing will wear down the rollers and cause a lot of paper dust to accumulate. The only way to keep them going is by cleaning them and replacing the rollers when they wear out.
I worked at a place that had 12 printer on a single floor that printed between 5,000 to 10,000 pages per printer per month. They were all great printers, but on average needed to be serviced ever six to eight weeks to keep working.
I'd recommend getting an additional printer, and getting a service contract on both printers when one needs to be serviced.
I've got the Phaser 8200 that I use for producing our short-run marketing materials.
.25 inch of the edge of 8.5x11 paper (sorry, don't run A4 so I don't have the measurements for that) - but when you run legal size paper, it only will print about 12" (leaving 1" top and bottom unprintable)
It's not really a laser printer (in that it doesn't use toner). It uses a solid ink technology - think 'melting large crayons.'
The quality is pretty good, but it depends on what you want to do. The unit we got has network printing built in, and will do doublesided printing automatically.
It is fairly cheap to operate. (you can get cheaper ink sticks at www.inktechnologies.com) and has a decent quality output. It doesn't do halftoning, but instead uses a diffusion style dot pattern to mix colors. For the most part that's not a problem, but don't expect to print areas of very light color without seeing dots. (like light gray panels, etc)
It will print on card-stock as well (but you have to manually feed it - which means you can't auto-doubleside print)
The print speed is pretty good, but if you haven't used it in a while, the warmup takes quite a few minutes (has to melt some of the ink).
Replacing the ink-sticks is fantastic. You just open it up and drop it in the slot. No mess. (again, think 'large block-like crayon')
The unit accepts Postscript or PCL and can even accept jobs via email or ftp (runs its own little ftp server, or can check a pop3 mailbox). There's a small web-server on the device that lets you check print status, get accounting (ink used, etc) and set other properties.
Some of the disadvantages:
Since it's a solid ink - the color doesn't permeate the paper (like a professional print). If you fold the paper and there is an area of color there, the color will 'break' as the surface of the paper breaks (small white lines). Additionally, if you press hard enough, you can get it to smudge.
It only prints to within about
--
Overall I'm pretty happy with the printer, as it wasn't horribly expensive (as these things go).
I mentioned that you can get cheaper ink than directly from Xerox. So far the cheaper ink works fairly well, but I think it may have a little bit more dot-gain than the Xerox sticks did. This results in small lines getting just a little fatter. I'd have to switch back to the Xerox sticks to be sure, but I don't remember some of the recurring jobs I print looking exactly as they do now back when I was running the Xerox sticks. Your results might be different.
GCC Printers Elite Color 16 DN $2099
That should be plenty for a church.
It seems that a lot of people replying to this thread haven't checked out color laser prices in the past couple of years. It used to be that the HP 4500 series was over $2000. However, that's no longer the case.
I picked up an HP Color Laserjet 4500 about a year ago for $600. This awesome printer had less than 10,000 pages on it. One $89 JetDirect 10bT Ethernet card later, I have a fantastic network printer that will last me for many years. I do a lot of prepress, brochures, etc. and the thing has already paid for itself just in printing out work for my clients (I charge them about half of what the local printer charges, and I've made plenty of money from that.)
I admit that $600 for a printer with less than 10,000 pages is a great deal, but there are some on eBay that are coming down under $800. (Note: Don't have one shipped... buy locally if at ALL possible. These things are HEAVY.)
If you're interested in a new color laser, the little Laserjet 1500L printers offer great bang for the buck. They're more unobtrusive than the giant 4500 series, but they have the same great laser quality starting at around $800. PC Connection has good prices for these as well, especially if you open an account with them.
If you want a brand-new giant color laser, try the Color Laserjet 4600. Yes, these are in the $2000 range, but if you're printing hundreds of pages per day, they are a good value.
I would never buy an inkjet again for a business. Yes, you can get an inkjet printer for $100, but those cartridges are a killer ($30 and they last perhaps 150 pages.) My color toner cartridges are $125, but they last for six thousand pages. The black toner cartridges are cheaper and go for 10,000 pages or more. At 11,000 pages, I've only ever had to replace one cyan cartridge, and I routinely do runs of a few hundred pages each. I'll never go back to the treadmill of inkjet cartridge upgrades.
For a church, I'd say the 1100 and 2500 series ($1200 or less) will work out great. Good luck on finding a printer that works well for you!
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
...like to the skies. Maybe your sky-fairy can miracle you up a new printer.
Fucking sissies with their sissy bullshit superstitions shouldn't need to print anyway. Goddamned fools running around with their heads up their collective asses.
You asked about color laser, but if all you're looking for is decent color prints you might want to take a look at Oki Digital LED printers. I'm not a printing expert and I'm really not sure of the advantages and disadvantages of LED vs traditional laser printing, but I do know that our users who have been using an Oki 7000 series for a while really like it.
Oh, I forgot that you're a church. Nevermind.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
the HP 4600DN is roughly $3500 (Canadian), gets the same speed, and doesn't have the blue problem. We've yet to have a maintenance problem other than running out of toner, and we do tons of CD labels and leaflets every month. We've been useing it for about 5 months.
As a bonus, it duplexes, so you don't have to re-load your bulletins to do the other side.
Go to freecolorprinter.com. This is Xerox's program whereby you can apply for a FREE color printer (typically solid ink, but they list laser/toner printers, too). The catch is that you have print a minimum number of pages per month and commit to buy all your consumables from the freecolorprinter website for a period of three years.
It's kind of like a lease: any failures they pay for (you pay for wear parts). After three years, the printer is yours to do with what you will at no cost to you. Use it for a doorstop if you want.
Some of my customers are in this program and are very happy with it.
I'm not a Xerox employee, and I don't get any kind of kickback for recommending it.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
- You sign up with them and indicate how many pages per month you print on average
- If they accept you into the program, they'll ship you a Xerox color laser printer (such as the Phaser 8200) which is completely network ready, etc.
- Every month, you send them a form (from the printer) to show them how many pages you printed during the month
- After 3 years, the printer is yours!
There are a few strings attached: You have to buy your ink from them. And if you forget to send in the form every month they'll charge you a fee. It comes with 3 years of free service. So if you have any problems, you can just call up and they'll help you out.Additionally, the black ink is completely free! And if the printer doesn't work out for you, they'll pay to ship it back to them. It's a really great deal! If you decide to go with them, use my referral number and I'll get $100! (Referral #: 427148). Note: I'm not associated with Xerox in any way other than as a satisfied customer.
-Andy
Or are all ordinary human needful things already
taken care of in your sheltered part of the world?
It's a church? Canon's your brand.
Depending on exactly what it is that you want to do, you may not need or want a colour laser printer.
If you're doing reasonably high-volume duplicating, but not such a high volume that an offset press is required, then what you want is a machine called a "digital duplicator", such as a Risograph. It's sort of a cross between a photocopier and one of the old crank Gestetner duplicating machines that used to be popular in schools. You put your original document on the scanner board just like a photocopier, then hit the "make master" button. After that, you set the number of copies that you want and let 'er rip, at about 120 pages per minute.
It's much faster than a photocopier or any laser printer, and about 10% of the cost per sheet as well.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Get one of these and not only can you do large print runs but also you can set your place up as a copy shop and end up with a second revenue stream.
I'm not associated with Xerox but I was a very happy customer.
Ed Almos
Now don't laugh, but this guy really needs a mimeograph machine. I saw the perfect machine for this guy, a digital 4-color mimeograph, at a conference about 10 years ago. I went to a computer conference for school tech admins, some company (I forgot who) was demoing a high-speed CMYK mimeograph that had digital input in PostScript. I guess they figured schools were familiar with mimeography and were prepared for this weird hybrid beast. This was back in the early days of direct-to-plate, and they'd adapted their mimeo machines to direct-to-stencil. It was designed for large-run 4color low rez jobs, and produced about newspaper-quality CMYK printing on plain paper. The system laser-etched all 4 colors of mimeo stencils right in place on the roller, then at the end of the run, you had to pull the stencils off the roller and toss them. They ran it for a few seconds and it cranked out pages at an astonishing rate.
I never thought much about high-end mimeography until a few years later when I spent a few months in Japan attending school. The office had two B&W copy machines, one regular copier, and one for long runs. The long-run machine was an advanced mimeograph, similar to the fancy 4C one I'd seen at the show years earlier. I was told it was cheaper to use a mimeo for 25+ pages, but it would cost more if you only wanted 1 or 2 pages, due to the extra cost of the dispoable stencils.
But ultimately, this guy just needs to buy a real printing press, or job out the work to the local instant printers. Using laser printers for a mass printing job is wasteful of resources. Your laser printer consumes a hell of a lot more electricity and expensive consumables than your local ink-and-paper instant printer facilty. Save the environment, support your local pressman!
-My church currently uses a small business color laser printer (Minolta 2200), but alas, it can not handle the load of our growing congregation.
.. but still you can add an identical printer to the network and just manually divide the load.
It sounds like your printer -almost- handles the load but falls just a little short. Simple - add another identical printer and have both printers service the same print queue. You are already experienced with that particular printer, no need to modify anything on the client side, you already have a stock of toner cartridges.
Actually I am thinking about the way Netware handles printers and print queues, not sure if it is quite that straightforward in a pure Windows environment or not
Simple, builds on your existing investment in money and knowledge, and you don't have to scrap your existing hardware.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
this isnt fuckig funny. i hope you know that. god damn loser. you like joplin? she has one decent album and a few good songs, the rest sucked, only chrysler's infection would allow mercedes to use that song in a commercial, and that bitch used to perform drunk as fuck on jacked up southern comfort and vermouth. the fact she could peform in an anebriated state proves she sucked as an artist. and retards like you dont even notice the bitch in cranked and sloppy. i guess PUKING this shit out on Slashcrap is poetic justice for that song. you coming out with the "humor" on a dead heroin junky. schweet try there buster.
Whoa man... Some fall out the wrong side of the cage today?
She was part of an era of artists who were rarely sober. Some things haven't changed since then. I do not condone such behavior, but the music is a lot of fun.
Then, if you look at the original post that I was replying to:
Why dont you send a prayer and god will give you advice - or even a color laser printer!
The song fits in quite well. Whether you like Janis or not, its an appropriate post.
Perhaps you need to read something a little more relaxing. I'm sure I could find you a 404 somehwhere that is just screaming your name.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
your sig says it all. you qoute the matrix reloaded. a piece of shit movie only a retard like yourself would like.
that 404 isnt a joke. do you think you are funny? you arent. people in RL probably vomit when they see a fat sexless live at home nerd geek loser sweaty unwashed cant afford good things in life loser approach them
i want to defecte on your face so bad, man, Sheise your face.
I won't sugarcoat this. This is a very bitter. Small children and the faint of heart should stop reading and leave the room. The rest of this letter is focused exclusively on FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER, not because I harbor any ill-will towards it, but because it wants to conjure up dirt against its fellow human beings. What does it think it is? I mean, if it thinks that it can walk on water, then it's sadly mistaken. I'm merely suggesting that FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER bickers and argues over petty things. I know you're wondering why I just wrote that. I'll explain shortly, but first, I should state that FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER dreams of a time when they'll be free to manipulate everything and everybody. That's the way it's planned it, and that's the way it'll happen -- not may happen, but will happen -- if we don't interfere, if we don't reach the broadest possible audience with the message that I am astonished by how little integrity and good judgment it possesses.
Why FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER would even pretend that we have no reason to be fearful about the criminally violent trends in our society today and over the past ten to fifteen years is beyond me. FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER can blame me for the influx of sick champions of deceit, lies, theft, plunder, and rapine if it makes it feel better, but it won't help its cause any. FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER's flunkies argue that its publications are good for the environment, human rights, and baby seals. These are the same possession-obsessed beggars who organize a whispering campaign against me. This is no coincidence; FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER not only lies, but it brags about its lying to its factotums. This is not to say that we must remove the misunderstanding that FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER has created in the minds of myriad people throughout the world -- not just in the poetic sense, but in the very specific and prosaic terms I am outlining in this letter. It is merely to point out that I didn't want to talk about this. I really didn't. But if FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER were paying attention -- which it would seem it is not, as I've already gone over this -- it'd see that its ideologies all stem from one, simple, faulty premise -- that the majority of heinous thought police are heroes, if not saints. Not surprisingly, FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER spouts the same bile in everything it writes, making only slight modifications to suit the issue at hand. The issue it's excited about this week is obstructionism, which says to me that it talks a lot about defeatism and how wonderful it is. However, it's never actually defined what it means. How can FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER argue for something it's never defined? This is not a question that we should run away from. Rather, it is something that needs to be addressed quickly and directly, because if the word "calcareoargillaceous" occurs to the reader, he or she may recall that FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER once tried to compromise the things that define us, including integrity, justice, love, and sharing. And here, I maintain, lies a clue to the intellectual vacuum so gapingly apparent in its fibs.
There's a little-known truth that isn't readily acknowledged by nerdy deadbeats: In order to convince us that the average working-class person can't see through its chicanery, FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER often turns to the old propagandist trick of comparing results brought about by entirely dissimilar causes. Is there anyone else out there who's noticed that before bothering us with its next batch of flighty, stingy cajoleries, FROMAN THE ASS PHILANDERER should review the rules of writing a persuas
How much paper can it store ?
How many pages/minute ?
Most important of all: What is the total click cost (cost per imprint.)
Consider asking a copier dealer about a pay per click.
Sorry for the lack of details.
We're expecting to do around 15,000 color pages per month, double sided. 11"x17" ability needed.
Copier functionality is a possibility... we are just checking our options.
Thanks for the idea of local printing houses... that is actually one of the options we are considering.
Thanks again for all the useful feedback.
While the Xerox Phaser series is great, if you want really high volume, you need Xerox DocuColor iGen3 for 6,000 impressions per hour, auto duplex. According to BusinessWire, the DocuColor iGen3 lauched starting at a list price of $510,000, but I don't know if that's the current price.
I help run a fairly large club (2,000 members) that has a publicity drive every 3-4 months, during which time we print something like 20,000 flyers, brochures, etc. in various formats. We also print quite a lot of lower volume things: tickets, certificates, etc.
We've investigated this area in some depth, and concluded that for the high volume stuff, it's much cheaper to use an external print shop if other practicalities permit. There are several around and they're quite competitive for the sort of business we could give them, so deals to reduce cost are quite plausible, and the service is generally pretty good. If you're printing thousands of pages, but not every day, I'd certainly recommend finding yourself a good local print shop to work with. (This is based in the UK, BTW; obviously YMMV elsewhere.)
For smaller volume work, using your own printer is much more cost effective, since you don't have the same level of overheads, and it's easier to tweak things if you need to. I guess this would be true of colour work as well, from what I've seen, but we only do B&W ourselves.
For really high volume work (thousands of pages per day) it can make sense to get your own serious kit and do everything in-house, but you're practically running your own print shop by that stage. Your requirements are similar to ours, though, so I'd guess this is overkill for you too.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.