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Author Topic: Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes  (Read 8558 times)

Gary Gray

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« on: December 22, 2008, 11:25:59 am »

I've been outsourcing my customers 4x6 and 5x7 prints for the past several years and doing my larger prints in house.

I'm giving some thought to doing the smaller prints myself, as I believe my volume level is enough to justify purchasing the equipment.

Problem is, I don't really know what is out there, so I figured I'd run this up the flag pole here as there appears to be no shortage of professional printers on this site.

What I need is a reliable, high speed economical printer for doing 4x6 and 5x7 prints on standard glossy and luster papers with quality.  Desktop Inkjets are out of the question and I don't want to have to deal with replacing small cartridges every 30 prints.  I'm talking print productions of at least 100 prints in a batch.  All prints would be run from a Mac Pro, using Lightroom or Photoshop CS3.  I'd like to keep the cost as reasonable as possible (under $1000).

Any thoughts, comments or recommendations would be appreciated.
« Last Edit: December 22, 2008, 11:26:41 am by Gary Gray »
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Tony B.

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2008, 01:08:20 pm »

Gary, if you are looking for a pro printer to print your 4x6 and 5x7 prints and are using the same size papers and printing borderless I think the only option would be the Epson 3800(if it allows borderless on 4x6/5x7), it allows printing down to 4x6.  The others, 17" printers, Canon iPF 5000/5100 and Epson 4800/4880 have minimum paper sizes of around 8x10 so you would have to cut your 4x6 and 5x7 from larger sheets or rolls.

I would guess the 3800 allows approx. 50 sheets to be in the cassette so you would not be able to run a full 100 without adding paper.

I would also believe that the output on glossy would not be as good as what you get sending them out due to gloss differential.

The Epson desktops would probably be your best bet but ink costs would be higher unless you felt like dealing with CIS systems.  A printer with some type of GLOP (or whatever its called) should help with glossy.

If ink longevity was not much of an issue something like the canon pro9000 or ,I think, epson 1400 would be good but they are dye inks and would fade much faster and again ink costs would be higher than a printer like the Epson 3800.

What printer do you use for your larger prints?  Maybe get a matching small printer (Canon pro9500 if using a large format Canon, Epson 3800/2400 or other if using a large format Epson) Since you would have experience with that make and know what to expect for output.

I think you are limited to the 3800 at this time if you do not want a desktop.

Tony
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Gary Gray

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2008, 08:47:03 pm »

Tony,

I'm doing all the large stuff on a HP Z3100, 44 inch model.  I can do sheet prints of 4x6 or 5x7 with the Z3100, but I don't want to have to cut these things individually out of rolls, too time consuming and labor intensive.  Not really interested in a desktop inkjet photo printer, I've got dozens of them, they are inefficient and unreliable for anything other than a few dozen prints.

I've been looking at some dye-sub printers which look like they could do batch work, but I'm not too keen on them.  It may come down to investing in a commercial device like a fuji or kodak print processor, but I just don't know what my options are on this stuff.  I was hopeful somebody had experience with smaller, less industrial printers that could do this type of work.  I'm not doing thousands of prints a week, but I want to be able to whip out a batch of 100 prints without having to nurse a machine.

Fujifilm has the ASK-2000, but it's a little more involved than I want to get.  I'm not trying to set up a point-of-sale print on demand operation, but the bulk capability is similar to what I'm looking for.


Quote from: Tony B.
Gary, if you are looking for a pro printer to print your 4x6 and 5x7 prints and are using the same size papers and printing borderless I think the only option would be the Epson 3800(if it allows borderless on 4x6/5x7), it allows printing down to 4x6.  The others, 17" printers, Canon iPF 5000/5100 and Epson 4800/4880 have minimum paper sizes of around 8x10 so you would have to cut your 4x6 and 5x7 from larger sheets or rolls.

I would guess the 3800 allows approx. 50 sheets to be in the cassette so you would not be able to run a full 100 without adding paper.

I would also believe that the output on glossy would not be as good as what you get sending them out due to gloss differential.

The Epson desktops would probably be your best bet but ink costs would be higher unless you felt like dealing with CIS systems.  A printer with some type of GLOP (or whatever its called) should help with glossy.

If ink longevity was not much of an issue something like the canon pro9000 or ,I think, epson 1400 would be good but they are dye inks and would fade much faster and again ink costs would be higher than a printer like the Epson 3800.

What printer do you use for your larger prints?  Maybe get a matching small printer (Canon pro9500 if using a large format Canon, Epson 3800/2400 or other if using a large format Epson) Since you would have experience with that make and know what to expect for output.

I think you are limited to the 3800 at this time if you do not want a desktop.

Tony
« Last Edit: December 22, 2008, 09:49:06 pm by Gary Gray »
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mmurph

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2008, 12:40:21 am »

Quote from: Gary Gray
I'm doing all the large stuff on a HP Z3100, 44 inch model.  I can do sheet prints of 4x6 or 5x7 with the Z3100, but I don't want to have to cut these things individually out of rolls, too time consuming and labor intensive.


Same problem here.  I have 2 Epson 7600 and a 9600.  (Going to upgrade to a 9900 later.) I finally sent a batch of 4x6 out to the lab on Saturday for the first time. I'd rather absorb the cost than do the tedious cutting, I am so sick of cutting them out.  

The Epson's have a minimum width of 8 inches. I was hoping the 4880 or similar would run narrow rolls, like 6" rolls? Sounds like that is not true.  Do the 3800 not run rolls at all, not even like the 2400 did?

I guess we could hack our 220ml carts to make a CIS for a 2400/2880.  Thery do support small roll holders. Always seemed a little flimsy and suspect to me.  Seems stupid too when you have the big machines around.  

Maybe run an 8" roll, have it cut at 6", then have just the one center cut to get two 4"?

Frustrating.
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Baxter

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #4 on: December 23, 2008, 04:02:25 am »

Dye-sub is probably the way to go so long as only gloss finish required. Prints are immediately dry and durable.

Other issue is that need to change machine over to different paper and CMY roll when swapping between 6 inch and 5 inch rolls. Running from a Mac, you need to check that the software is available, better now than previously. I've got a Mitsubishi CP9550DW and it works really well, is simple to operate, doesn't take up masses of desk space and fires up really quickly when needed. Not done batches of 100, but have worked it quite hard at a couple of events.

I chose to get custom profile made and this improved image quality.

Bigger prints are made on LF inkjet.
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Ernst Dinkla

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« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2008, 09:04:46 am »

Quote from: Gary Gray
I've been outsourcing my customers 4x6 and 5x7 prints for the past several years and doing my larger prints in house.

I'm giving some thought to doing the smaller prints myself, as I believe my volume level is enough to justify purchasing the equipment.

Problem is, I don't really know what is out there, so I figured I'd run this up the flag pole here as there appears to be no shortage of professional printers on this site.

What I need is a reliable, high speed economical printer for doing 4x6 and 5x7 prints on standard glossy and luster papers with quality.  Desktop Inkjets are out of the question and I don't want to have to deal with replacing small cartridges every 30 prints.  I'm talking print productions of at least 100 prints in a batch.  All prints would be run from a Mac Pro, using Lightroom or Photoshop CS3.  I'd like to keep the cost as reasonable as possible (under $1000).

Any thoughts, comments or recommendations would be appreciated.


There are some routes you can take. I do not have the experience with any but studied it a bit to see whether I could develop a new market for  my shop. The budget you mention may be too optimistic for a good solution.

Epson, HP, Fuji, Noritsu etc they all have some new developments in inkjet based volume printers, basically small web inkjet printers for the minilab. The Fuji Frontier Dry Minilab DL410 with Epson technology aboard delivered a very high quality gloss print. Few new inkjet developments on the Photokina 2008 if compared to 2006 but the Minilab inkjet models were interesting. A big investment for your needs.

There are some desktop printer models Hp, Epson with high throughput and big carts, intended for the office but I wonder what their quality could be for the kind of work you refer to. Epson B500DN for example. Durabrite inkset. A4 sheets. Cutting of the sheets to the sizes mentioned could be done with a slitter or die cut machine like used for business cards but with larger cut sizes. An example:
http://www.asianproducts.com/product_9/bus...91809574799.htm
Reading the text I think the company is aware of digital photo printing needs.
There's a niche in the market for a printer like that but with a better inkset, gloss + matte black, CcmY. The HP B9180 is an option but could be faster and have larger carts. And a slitter like above for A3 size

Then there are automatic cutters like Fotoba sells. Many small prints on a bigger sheet nested by Qimage and cut on an automatic cutter doesn't have to be a bad solution. Pity that Qimage doesn't include the extra code lines needed for Fotoba cutters. I suggested to Mike to include them and mentioned it to Fotoba people as well. Expensive RIPs have them. There will be more ink/paper waste though in that system. A slitter, cutter, that can handle sheets/rolls say at least 13" wide and the wide format printing print pages of 13" by 36" or 44" from the roll may be enough to solve your problem. Fotoba has machines like that as well but they are expensive durable machines that need more than a 100 pieces a day, week, month ? to justify cost.



Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/
« Last Edit: December 23, 2008, 09:19:08 am by Ernst Dinkla »
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Gary Gray

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #6 on: December 23, 2008, 12:58:22 pm »

I've considered the slitter approach.  I've used slitters in the past, mainly for mailing labels for newspapers.  A decent quality slitter would cost more than I want to spend on a printer and they only work in one dimension.  They are also maintenance nightmares, requiring constant adjustments and fiddling.  The gap between a good desktop inkjet and a small dye-sub print system such as to think I'd almost be better off just investing in the Fuji dye-sub thing.  My concern is I don't know how efficient they are with ribbons and paper so it could end up costing me more than having it outsourced.  I've used the Kodak dye-sub printers for print on demand work in the field and personally, I don't think the quality is what I want.  Kodak over prices their stuff and it broke down all the time.  I put it in the closet and never took it out again.

In a perfect world, it would be a inkjet with a bin that held a stack of 100 photo sheets, have ink ctgs that held around 50-75 ml of ink for about $30 a pop, was easy to color calibrate or load profiles and handled a wide variety of papers.  I'm so turned off to existing desk top inkjet photo printers as they all seem to give it up after a years use and it costs way too much per print.  I can print a lot of stuff on the Z3100 very economically, but I lose all of that economy by spending 5 times the manhours just cutting and sifting through the sheets.

Maybe some day the printer manufacturers will fill that hole with something half way decent for a cost between 1000-2000 dollars, but I'm not holding my breath.  Plastic ink sucking, head clogging junk is all I expect.



Quote from: Ernst Dinkla
There are some routes you can take. I do not have the experience with any but studied it a bit to see whether I could develop a new market for  my shop. The budget you mention may be too optimistic for a good solution.

Epson, HP, Fuji, Noritsu etc they all have some new developments in inkjet based volume printers, basically small web inkjet printers for the minilab. The Fuji Frontier Dry Minilab DL410 with Epson technology aboard delivered a very high quality gloss print. Few new inkjet developments on the Photokina 2008 if compared to 2006 but the Minilab inkjet models were interesting. A big investment for your needs.

There are some desktop printer models Hp, Epson with high throughput and big carts, intended for the office but I wonder what their quality could be for the kind of work you refer to. Epson B500DN for example. Durabrite inkset. A4 sheets. Cutting of the sheets to the sizes mentioned could be done with a slitter or die cut machine like used for business cards but with larger cut sizes. An example:
http://www.asianproducts.com/product_9/bus...91809574799.htm
Reading the text I think the company is aware of digital photo printing needs.
There's a niche in the market for a printer like that but with a better inkset, gloss + matte black, CcmY. The HP B9180 is an option but could be faster and have larger carts. And a slitter like above for A3 size

Then there are automatic cutters like Fotoba sells. Many small prints on a bigger sheet nested by Qimage and cut on an automatic cutter doesn't have to be a bad solution. Pity that Qimage doesn't include the extra code lines needed for Fotoba cutters. I suggested to Mike to include them and mentioned it to Fotoba people as well. Expensive RIPs have them. There will be more ink/paper waste though in that system. A slitter, cutter, that can handle sheets/rolls say at least 13" wide and the wide format printing print pages of 13" by 36" or 44" from the roll may be enough to solve your problem. Fotoba has machines like that as well but they are expensive durable machines that need more than a 100 pieces a day, week, month ? to justify cost.



Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/
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Ernst Dinkla

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2008, 05:20:15 am »

Quote from: Gary Gray
The gap between a good desktop inkjet and a small dye-sub print system such as to think I'd almost be better off just investing in the Fuji dye-sub thing.  My concern is I don't know how efficient they are with ribbons and paper so it could end up costing me more than having it outsourced.  I've used the Kodak dye-sub printers for print on demand work in the field and personally, I don't think the quality is what I want.  Kodak over prices their stuff and it broke down all the time.  I put it in the closet and never took it out again.

In a perfect world, it would be a inkjet with a bin that held a stack of 100 photo sheets, have ink ctgs that held around 50-75 ml of ink for about $30 a pop, was easy to color calibrate or load profiles and handled a wide variety of papers.  I'm so turned off to existing desk top inkjet photo printers as they all seem to give it up after a years use and it costs way too much per print.  I can print a lot of stuff on the Z3100 very economically, but I lose all of that economy by spending 5 times the manhours just cutting and sifting through the sheets.

Maybe some day the printer manufacturers will fill that hole with something half way decent for a cost between 1000-2000 dollars, but I'm not holding my breath.  Plastic ink sucking, head clogging junk is all I expect.

I'm optimistic. Inkjet is making progress and is penetrating offset printing, electrostatic printing, analogue photo print markets more and more. The Epson office model I mentioned has the large carts, pro heads but only 4 of them. Give it six ink channels, a smaller roll for gloss media and an auto cutter and you are close to what is demanded. It will not compete with minilab prices, dry or wet, but make a substantial price difference to dye-sub model output.

Meanwhile the bottleneck is in cutting so that's why I suggested more solutions for that issue.


Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/



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jasonrandolph

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Bulk Printers for 4x6 & 5x7 sizes
« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2008, 09:42:42 pm »

Quote from: Gary Gray
I've been outsourcing my customers 4x6 and 5x7 prints for the past several years and doing my larger prints in house.

I'm giving some thought to doing the smaller prints myself, as I believe my volume level is enough to justify purchasing the equipment.

Problem is, I don't really know what is out there, so I figured I'd run this up the flag pole here as there appears to be no shortage of professional printers on this site.

What I need is a reliable, high speed economical printer for doing 4x6 and 5x7 prints on standard glossy and luster papers with quality.  Desktop Inkjets are out of the question and I don't want to have to deal with replacing small cartridges every 30 prints.  I'm talking print productions of at least 100 prints in a batch.  All prints would be run from a Mac Pro, using Lightroom or Photoshop CS3.  I'd like to keep the cost as reasonable as possible (under $1000).

Any thoughts, comments or recommendations would be appreciated.

I can't speak to the longevity of the prints, but I have had an Epson PictureMate 4x6 printer for about four years.  While it only prints 4x6, the results are quite good IMHO.  Usually, when I'm printing 4x6, I'm not too woried about longevity, or I would be using my 3800.  For "casual' snaps though, it's my workhorse.  

I paid $150 for mine when I got it new, but there are newer, improved versions for the same price.  Ink is $30 for a single cartridge which holds all inks, and it comes with 100 sheets of Epson glossy paper.

If you're worried about longevity, you may have to use something like the 3800, which is right around your $1000 limit.
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