Cost of printing

Where do you get your ink from? I have tried that in the past and it
screwed up my Epson and I ended up buying another one and am leery to try it
again, but I sure would like to bring the costs down.

Gary

"Taliesyn" wrote in message
...
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
Does anyone have a reliable summary of per-page costs for colour inkjet
and
colour laser printers?


I refill my own inkjet with quality bulk ink. My per-page cost is now
too low to even calculate. And the money I save will pay for several
new printers in a couple of years.

To give you an idea of savings... I paid $17.50 ($ Canadian, before
taxes and shipping) for an 8 oz bottle of one color, that's about
25 refills for my printer (give or take). One genuine cartridge would
have set me back about $22, plus taxes.

Any reason you can't refill?

-Taliesyn

Are you printing photos? You can get 8x10s at Sam's Club for about $2 and
you don't have to buy any equipment... and they last a long time.

--
Albert Wiersch


"Wolf Kirchmeir" wrote in message
patico.ca...
On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 12:43:29 -0400, Taliesyn wrote:

=Any reason you can't refill?
=
=-Taliesyn

OK, my question didn't include enough background to set the context. Here
goes.

I will replace my HP 660C and Epson Stylus 740 soon -- main reasons are
poor
colour prinitng and cost of cartridges. I want archival colour printing,
so
the choice is between colour laser (wh/ produces very durable colour
prints)
and archival inkjet such as Canon and Epson, whose archival quality is at
poresent an unklnown.

On Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:55:12 -0400 (EDT), "Wolf Kirchmeir"
dijo:

Anyone have better data than mine on printing costs?

I can't help with the color costs, as I print only black and white. My
Laserjet 5Si and 8000 (same print engine and toner carts) cost me
about 1/4 of one cent per impression. That's including toner,
maintenance kits and other repairs, and depreciation. The 5Si
currently has 2.5 million prints on it and is going strong. The 8000
is newer and has only about 750,000 on it.

I realize these printers may be overkill for your needs, but your
estimate of 1.5 to 3 cents per page for black and white laser still
seems very high to me. You can get a decent used 5Si on eBay for a
couple hundred bucks. Just be sure to buy one locally, because they're
heavy beasts. Even if it's overkill, maybe you should get one anyway.
It'll last you a decade at least.

--
Bogus e-mail address, but I read this newsgroup regularly, so reply here.

Cartridges for printers like the 740 can be bought on places like eBay
for a few bucks a piece. Since this printer has no chip in the
cartridge it is very cheap to manufacturer ink cartridges for it. My
experience with generic ink cartridges has been pretty good over the
last few years.

The Epson and other brands of inks for these printers are not considered
archival. Epson does make ink printers which use pigmented or archival
inks good for 50-200 years on accelerated aging tests.

Color laser is very archival. But it is also quite costly per unit
print for desktop models, unless you can refill the toner cartridges. I
too came to the same conclusion that the printer is basically free when
considering the replacement of one set of consumables.

Some color laser printers come with starter cartridges which have
considerably less toner in them than the replacements do (Minolta has
gone to this and I believe HP is also.) Again if you can refill you can
save quite a bit.

You are correct about the amount of toner required. THey usually quote
you 5% coverage per color. With overlap for creation of numerous
colors, this may fill 10% of the page. Photos often are 60-80%
coverage, or about 40-60% per color, so whatever yield they claim,
divide by 8-12 times. Most of these copiers have a monochrome mode
which will just use the black toner, which is often much cheaper and
sometimes has higher yield than the color ones.

Some color copiers have more expendables than just the toner cartridges.
Some have transfer belts, fuser belts or fuser oil that has to be
replaced as well. The Minolta QMS has a transfer belt which is used
four times per color copy, but they tend not to mention this fact.

I suggest doing a lot of research before buying into a desktop color
laser printer. They tend to bite you when you are not looking. They
are also fairly complex and they often don't have very long warranties.

Art
Wolf Kirchmeir wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 12:43:29 -0400, Taliesyn wrote:

=Any reason you can't refill?
=
=-Taliesyn

OK, my question didn't include enough background to set the context. Here
goes.

I will replace my HP 660C and Epson Stylus 740 soon -- main reasons are poor
colour prinitng and cost of cartridges. I want archival colour printing, so
the choice is between colour laser (wh/ produces very durable colour prints)
and archival inkjet such as Canon and Epson, whose archival quality is at
poresent an unklnown.

I've tried refilling -- just got a bloody mess with the HP printer, and a
clogged printhead with the Epson.

The salesclerk at Staples told me that HP claims 5000 pages per toner
cartridge, or 20,000 total for a CMYK set, which doesn't make sense, since
CMYK all print to the same page -- ie, 5,000 pages in colour for the set of
four cartridges. Since the set costs about $750 at Staples, that's 15 cents
per print @ 5%. A photo will have a higher percentage, but less than 100% for
each colour, say 50% average -- $1.40 per print.

As near as I can figure, the Epson Stylus 740 costs about the same (it prints
about 500 pages per cartridge set), the HP costs about 2x as much, but I have
no idea of the costs of archival quality inkjet prints (eg, Epson and Canon.)

BTW, the printer in question costs $1000 -- not much more than a set of toner
cartridges!

I've figured that b/w laser printer costs range from about 1.5 to 3 cents a
page @ 5% coverage - as cheaper than a photocopier. I may get a b/w laser
printer just for b/w printing, since over 90% of my printing is b/w only.

Anyone have better data than mine on printing costs?

Thanks.

People's experiences with Epson printers are very variable. SOme of it
has to do with the usage, some the conditions that are used in, some the
ink used, and some how the manufacturing and design was with that model.

Some just need maintenance to get the head to seal in the ink station
when the machine is shut down, and some, the air valve that is supposed
to close when the printer shuts down, is left partially open if ink
residue dries within it.

The newer printers seem to be better at keeping their heads clear. I
have a 880 which has never clogged in about 18 months I owned it, and it
is not used regularly. I am using generic ink cartridges I bought on eBay.

If you have problems with ink clogs email me and I will send you a free
copy of my Epson Cleaning Manual. In most cases a simple cleaning
process every 6 months to a year is all that is required to keep the
machine in good running order, and you can then keep it going for many
years.

Art

Taliesyn wrote:
Gary wrote:

Where do you get your ink from? I have tried that in the past and it
screwed up my Epson and I ended up buying another one and am leery to
try it
again, but I sure would like to bring the costs down.


Yes, I really had no choice, I had to refill if I wanted to do a
lot of photo printing. Can't help it when you buy a digital camera!

I have always bought my refill inks from Atlantic Inket. Their inks
have worked fine for our printers. Between my sister and I, we have
run them through two Epson 740s, an HP 930, a Lexmark Z55, and now,
both of our Canon i850s. The "Canon" ink seems especially good,
can't find any difference yet between it and the real thing. Printed
a photo and it's identical to the one I made with genuine Canon inks.
Unfortunately I don't know if I'm still getting some residual Canon
inks in the system, because this is only my first refill.

http://www.atlanticinkjet.com/

Note: They have separate divisions in the US and Canada, accessible
from the Home page... and fast, friendly service - at least from
the Canadian side.

This group's resident Epson archaeologist, Arthur, will probably
disagree with me, but if you had some problem with Epson, clogging
I assume, you're not alone. They seem to be notorious for doing that,
and even with genuine Epson inks. Both of our Epsons were junked
because they tended to clog if we didn't use them for a few days.
That's simply not acceptable, as we've never had to run the clean
cycle for clogging even once on my Lexmark Z55, my sister's HP 930,
or our Canon i850s.

-Taliesyn