Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: agwe23 on January 27, 2007, 09:19:05 pm

Title: cost per square inch/foot for z3100 / ipf8000
Post by: agwe23 on January 27, 2007, 09:19:05 pm
i was wondering if anyone had any data on the cost per square inch/foot for large format printers.  

i am currently in the market for a 44 inch printer in a print for pay environment.  i am based in the philippines and the prices charged here for those services are nowhere near the prices charged in the US; so cost per square in/ft is very important, especially since qualitywise, these 2 printers are pretty much toe to toe with each other.

i was able to get cost per square foot for the ipf8000 and it's pretty low (compared to epson) in the printworks website.  but i could not find any cost estimates as regards to the hp products (either z2100 or the z3100)
Title: cost per square inch/foot for z3100 / ipf8000
Post by: Stephen Best on January 27, 2007, 09:56:44 pm
I don't have the figures you're after, but in my experience inkjet printing on resin-coated isn't competitive with chromogenic (Lambda etc). Cheap enough to do for yourself, but the margins aren't there for commercial work. Printing on rag or canvas is a different story, and the ink cost for this is likely pretty irrelevant. But by all means do your own sums, and for your own local market.
Title: cost per square inch/foot for z3100 / ipf8000
Post by: ternst on January 28, 2007, 06:43:03 am
agwe23 (whatever your name is):

I just looked up the usage figures for my 24" z3100 for the past month and came up with about 2ml total ink use per square foot using glossy/luster papers. If you bought individual ink carts direct from HP (at full retail price) that would be about a dollar per square foot for the ink. You can get the carts cheaper elsewhere, plus can buy twin packs, so that price would be a fair amount lower if you did a lot of printing...

Tim Ernst in Arkansas
http://www.Cloudland.net (http://www.Cloudland.net)
Title: cost per square inch/foot for z3100 / ipf8000
Post by: ricgal on January 28, 2007, 11:52:13 am
The 3100 gives you detailed accounting for every job so at least it is easy to work out exactly each much job costs-  much cheaper than an Epson 4000 i hasten to add which you can almost hear greedily sucking away at those 220mil carts (and dumping most of it i n the waste ink tank)
Title: cost per square inch/foot for z3100 / ipf8000
Post by: Chris_Brown on January 29, 2007, 04:54:38 pm
Quote
i was wondering if anyone had any data on the cost per square inch/foot for large format printers. 
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a] (http://index.php?act=findpost&pid=97864\")

There's one report [a href=\"http://www.printworks-usa.com/PDFs/iPF8K9K-CostAnalysis.pdf]for the Canon iPF8000 here.[/url]
There's a more complete report for a Canon iPF5000 here. (http://canonipf5000.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/iPF5000CostAnalysis.pdf)