printing costs

November 11, 2006 10:43 AM

I have a huge print job, should a pay someone or just buy the machine?

I may need up to 1,000,000 a4 prints per month been done. One side would be fullcolour print. The paper quality would be very low but should be suitable for photocopying. The image quality too would be quite low i.e. im not printing the mona lisa but it musnt look sloppy. Ive done a search on the web and found some prices. Its seems quite expensive. I tried searching for how much a commercial printer would cost but kept getting leads to actual print shops. Can anyone tell me how much a colour a4 printer suitable to printing in bulk would cost? Just ballpark figures needed and any links or terminology would be great

posted by thegeezer3 to computers & internet (8 comments total)

I have a huge print job, should a pay someone or just buy the machine?

You don't know how to run a four-colour press, and it's not something you have time to learn, and the most cost-efficient way of printing these is on A1-or-larger sheets, and that printing press is absolutely enormous and runs to six figures.

False economy. Move along.
posted by genghis at 10:55 AM on November 11, 2006

1,000,000 color prints per month?

Let's see, HP's fastest business-level copier will do 24 ppm and is designed for up to 200,000 pages per month. At 24 ppm, 8 hours per day, it will take 86 days to do 1,000,000 copies.

So if you buy about 4 of them, and keep them running non-stop, you should be able to generate your million prints in a month. You'll need at least 2 staff to keep them fed - paper and ink in, copies out. Those printers are about $8,000 each.

You get leads to actual print shops because this is the type of job that should be handled by a print shop. Unless you actually want to go into the printing business, I'd advise retaining a print shop, with actual industrial printing presses (they have presses that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than thousands of dollars). I'm sure you'd get nice quantity discounts.
posted by jellicle at 11:08 AM on November 11, 2006

You could try using the Xerox product advisor however, doing a million unit run on a color laser (or inkjet) printer is not at all economically feasible compared to printing offset. You'll want to factor in not only the cost of the laser printer but of the ink cartridges and time, as an example, Xerox's faster color printers clock in at ~30 pages per minute with a capacity of ~3000 sheets of paper--someone (you?) is going to have to stand there and keep swapping in paper trays and clearing paper jams and at 30 pages per minute, you're going to standing around a long time.

Other factors:
• running the job offset will ensure color consistency across the entire run: laser/inkjet printers tend to print heavy/light as the ink supply diminishes.
• laser ink printed items are not as durable as items printed in offset inks, and a reputable offset print house will rerun a smeared job.
• I don't know the details of how a big purchase like a high-capacity laser printer is factored into English taxes, but where I am, equipment purchase costs have to be amortized over several years vs the cost of services, which can be fully deducted in the same year. Talk to your accountant.
posted by jamaro at 11:16 AM on November 11, 2006

absolutely, develop a relationship with a local print shop. Not a corner store copy shop, mind you, but a commercial offset printer with multiple presses. this is exactly what they do, and they'll be able to do within a few days what you couldn't do in a month. For high quantity jobs, printers will factor in price breaks that will, in most cases, make the cost many times less expensive than (the labor, time, materials, and hardware necessary for ) printing it yourself.
posted by ab3 at 11:34 AM on November 11, 2006

...what ab3 said. Phone up a few printers and invite their sales reps to your office (separately) for bid meetings.

Even if every sheet has to be custom printed (eg, each has a different mailing address), there are mass mailer print services.

I can't think of a commercial printer's salesman who wouldn't want a contract to run a million four-colors, scheduled for N day of every month. The printer can even save you money through price breaks on quantity purchases of paper, something they're willing to do when they know the client's going to work through it on schedule. You're somebody's dream client.
posted by ardgedee at 12:07 PM on November 11, 2006

s/salesman/sales representative
posted by ardgedee at 12:07 PM on November 11, 2006

Go for a local web press, not sheetfed. One million a month is right up their alley. You'll go on a 60 - 70# weight stock and the end look will be professional, but not as pretty as offset. If these are flyers or inserts, the web printer will deal with delivery as well to whoever needs them.

Talk to 3 printers, tell them it's 1,000,000 per month for one year, see who gives you a good price. Web presses book up so you'll need to stay on time each month.
posted by Salmonberry at 2:06 PM on November 11, 2006

This is precisely the sort of thing that one division of my company does, presuming that you need these addressed individually? if you'd like to contact me I should be able to get you a reasonable quote.

Email in profile.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 2:34 PM on November 11, 2006