Printing Cost on Epson 3800

[Kenneth Sky]

Mark
Thanks for your article. As usual, it is precise & concise. I noticed that unlike in your past articles, you left out depreciation costs for hardware and maintenance. Is there a reason or is it too highly variable?
Ken

[Mark D Segal]

Mark
Thanks for your article. As usual, it is precise & concise. I noticed that unlike in your past articles, you left out depreciation costs for hardware and maintenance. Is there a reason or is it too highly variable?
Ken
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Hi Ken,

No reason other than an editorial decision of mine that most people focus mostly on ink and paper and don't concern themselves much with the cost of the printer - it's a sunk cost once you've bought it, but of course an incremental cost worth thinking about before buying it, so perhaps I should have covered it. I do have the data. It is of course quite variable on a per print basis depending as it does on throughput, the time period you chose for amortizing the machine and the discount rate you use for the alternative value of the funds.

This printer happens to be excellent value, say compared with a 28800, because for 1200~1300 dollars it comes with about $570 worth of ink, so the residual cost of the machine is in the range of 600~700 dollars, which is below the price range of an Epson 2880 (13 inch, does have a roll holder, not nearly as much ink supplied, and not in the professional series).

For what it's worth, at the rather high volume of throughput I've experienced (equivalent of about 170 standard prints per month), using a discount rate of 5% and 24 month amortization, depreciation is running at only 15 cents per standard print.

Mark

[Kenneth Sky]

Mark
Thanks for that quick response. Of course, my volumes aren't near yours but I would have amortized it over 4-5 years (because I think printer technology is going to level off). So even if it's $.50, it's almost insignifigant against the cost of paper & ink!
Ken

[Mark D Segal]

Ken,

Yes, you're right -  ink and paper is the big ticket over quite a range of amortization estimates.

Everyone (who's interested) needs to make their own determination about amortization. Over the past 4 years I've gone through 3 Epson printers - 4000, 4800 and now the 3800. The 4000 was Epson's big-leap technological entrant to the smaller scale pro printer line. Since then, each new model made incremental improvements over its predecessor, but it's cumulative, so gamuts and overall performance just gets incrementally better - and the same will happen again probably within the next 6~12 months when the 11880 technology gets embedded in a 17" model. When that happens, I predict I'll sell the 3800 and buy the new one, because I think it will be a no-brainer from both an economic and technical perspective. So two years is probably an over-estimate of the 3800's economic life for me.  But as you say, so what?