a cheap tabloid printer?

May 1, 2006 5:53 PM

I'm looking for a printer that will print on tabloid-sized newsprint in black and white -- that's all it needs to do. What's the absolute cheapest I'm going to be able to get one?

PS: I'm in the UK.

posted by reklaw to computers & internet (23 comments total)

Oh, and in case I'm not making sense, I mean tabloid-sized as in 'would create a tabloid when folded', if you see what I mean.
posted by reklaw at 5:56 PM on May 1, 2006

On real, actual newsprint? I've never heard of it being printed other than on large printing presses....
posted by raf at 6:29 PM on May 1, 2006

Ah. For 'newsprint' read 'cheap paper', then.
posted by reklaw at 6:37 PM on May 1, 2006

Tabloid is approximately A3, so you'll need an A2 printer. Most A2 printers that I've come across use special papers; newsprint is too absorbent for inkjet-style printing, which all the lower-end ones are.

Unless you really only require one-offs or need copies in a few hours, it's almost certainly going to be cheaper to go to an actual printer that does this kind of work -- I was going to suggest East End Offset but it appears the SWP sold that a couple of years ago. But a quick Google seatch found this which claims that you can get 1000 copies of a 12-page tabloid for £442. The cheapest basic A2 printer I can find is double that.
posted by Hogshead at 7:03 PM on May 1, 2006

How about a used HP designjet 750 series printer? They print 700/750C Plus (24-in): 8.3- to 24-in wide sheets; 24-in rolls
700/750C Plus/755CM (36-in): 8.3- to 36-in wide sheets; 24- and 36-in rolls. There's one on ebay for about $650 right now.
posted by Gungho at 7:18 PM on May 1, 2006

Hogshead: I realise that it would be cheaper to use an actual printer for a one-off, but I'm thinking long term -- surely if I spend, say, £1,000 for an A2 printer, I'm likely to start saving money over printer prices quite quickly... aren't I?
posted by reklaw at 7:27 PM on May 1, 2006

You're looking at an 11x17" machine, but with 17x22" capacity? Accepts double-length paper, and you just print your stuff sideways, right?

There are lots of 11x17" capacity printers, from expensive to very expensive. I have absolutely no idea how you'd outfit them for the longer paper, though...
posted by five fresh fish at 7:27 PM on May 1, 2006

You really need to state your goal.

I seems you want to produce a tabloid. The questions are: how many copies, how many pages, and how often.

Unless you are just looking for something to proof your tabloid, the cheapest A2 printer will be a major pain if you want to make more than a few copies of more than a few pages. Just manually folding the pages will quickly become a drag.

"copy shops"/"print shops" exist for a reason. Good ones will give you the price points between printing pages, xeroxing them, and using offset.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 7:39 PM on May 1, 2006

MonkeySaltedNuts:

I want to produce a tabloid with 8 pages. I'm looking into investing in a printer and doing it myself because printing seems to be so expensive: the cheapest prices for runs of 1,000-10,000 seem to hover around £500, with the quantity printed making little difference to the price, which makes me think that I'm not being charged for materials but for labour (am I wrong?)

If you can find me a copy/print shop that will do a few thousand 8-page tabloids for a decent price, all the better. It just seemed to me that buying is always likely to be better than renting, if you see what I mean.
posted by reklaw at 7:48 PM on May 1, 2006

reklaw: I want to produce a tabloid with 8 pages. I'm looking into investing in a printer and doing it myself because printing seems to be so expensive: the cheapest prices for runs of 1,000-10,000 seem to hover around £500

At that volume you have to go to offset printing - take a full sized negative of your page, photo resist it onto an aluminan plate, wrap it around a drum in a printing press, and crank out the stream of paper that go through the automaitc cutters and folders.

Any attempt to do this with just a printer is insane - you will burn out the printer and consume too many gallons of printer-ink (very pricey).

If you want to do it in house then you need to become an offset printer.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 8:14 PM on May 1, 2006

Hmm. I was kind of hoping I was on a line between crazy and "so crazy it just might work!" Is it really so unthinkable to print a few thousand pages with a heavy-duty A2 printer of some description?
posted by reklaw at 8:50 PM on May 1, 2006

Buy a ream of regular printer paper. Thats around 400 sheets. Now, sit at home and fold these. I think you'll see where we're going with this...
posted by devilsbrigade at 8:54 PM on May 1, 2006

Hold up; negatives and photoresist are old-tech. Digital direct-to-plate is the new tech, and it's making it possible to print short runs of offscreen press extremely economically.
posted by five fresh fish at 9:15 PM on May 1, 2006

I would try checking out what local manufacturing, architechtural, draughting, etc firms do with their old equipment. What you're probably looking for is an old inkjet plotter.

Case in point: I was storing in my spare bathroom an HP inkjet with a 24"-ish wide carriage that my buddy's work gave him when they upgraded. It uses continuous roll paper and has a built-in manual cutter.

You could possibly pick one up cheap from a liquidator, auction house, or wherever these things end up.
posted by Extopalopaketle at 11:10 PM on May 1, 2006

Even if you could buy a $17,510 to $24,000 machine, e.g. the top line HP DesignJet 815mfp, such machines are for proofing and they don't offer cutting and folding services.

Usuallly such (cutting/folding) serices are farmed out.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 11:24 PM on May 1, 2006

Is it really so unthinkable to print a few thousand pages with a heavy-duty A2 printer of some description?

Yes. Holy crap, yes. They're not built for that kind of volume. They're inkjets. Do a Google search for "A2 laser printer". There aren't any.

As MonkeySaltedNuts says, you're not considering print supplies. Print cartridges for A2 printers are not cheap (or if they are then they have low capacity), and you won't be buying paper in enough bulk to get a decent discount on it either.

Plus you're not considering your own time. You're going to have to watch the printer, feed new paper, feed the old paper back in, clear paper-jams (which with cheap paper will be frequent), change print cartridges, cut, collate, fold, stack... And you're going to have to do it every issue.

I once used an A3 laser printer to produce 50 preview copies of a 100-page A4 book for a trade show. It took two long, hot, exasperating evenings and at the end I vowed to never do anything so stupid again.
posted by Hogshead at 3:34 AM on May 2, 2006

What others have said - this is, with respect, a crazy idea. Just folding and collating these would be a nightmare.

Is it really so unthinkable to print a few thousand pages with a heavy-duty A2 printer of some description?

This is difficult because I don't know your budget. If it is under £50,000, there is no such thing as a heavy-duty A2 printer. At this level they will be proofing or architect/GIS tools and will be inkjet, slow and expensive to run. As a guess, running costs would be £3-£5 / sheet.

However, if you've got the cash you should be able to get a second-hand B2 for under £200,000. Factor in a salary of £30k for the experienced guy to run it, £10k /year for the warehouse unit to keep it in, £5k for transport and setup costs and another £50k for running costs, materials and inks and you should be able to print in-house.
posted by blag at 4:28 AM on May 2, 2006

If you want the el-cheapo route, get a wide-carriage dot matrix. Inks are dirt cheap and you can find a used printer sometimes for free. You can find some quality dot-matrix that rival the quality of ink-jet, especially on newsprint.
posted by JJ86 at 6:03 AM on May 2, 2006

Some of this advice telling you to spend thousands of pounds for printing on newsprint is outrageous.
posted by JJ86 at 6:05 AM on May 2, 2006

The company I work for leases one of these toshiba all-in-one color laser printer / copier / scanner / fax beasts. It seems to handle practically anything you throw at it including tabloid sized 11x17 paper (that's close to A3, isn't it?). According to Toshiba's web site the pricing starts at around $14,000US, which is about £7872 if google conversion is correct. That said, collating and folding could make this less than economical for 10,000 copies.

The closest thing I've found to our printer on the Toshiba UK site is this, though it only prints in black.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:15 AM on May 2, 2006

i'd really suggest just farming it out, in my experience, its best to leave volume printing to the professionals.

especially thinking long-term, if the paper you produce is successful you'll hate spending all your time dealing with printing issues.
posted by yeahyeahyeahwhoo at 6:37 AM on May 2, 2006

if you've only contacted copy houses so far, you may want to see who prints the newspapers in your town. often those presses are willing to take on odd jobs for fairly reasonable prices. plus, they offer a quick turnaround time.
posted by kelegraph at 7:37 AM on May 2, 2006

the difference between 1000 and 10000 copies is great. I also reccomend contacting your local paper. They likely have some kind of setup for printing their advertising inserts and they might be able to cut you a better rate.
posted by Megafly at 5:09 PM on May 2, 2006