Printer / Copier

... I use a lot of coloured ink...
What's "a lot"? How many cartridges of what capacity (in mls)? Are these single colour or multi-colour cartridges? How many A4 pages per month do your printing volumes equate to? What are you current ink-costs per week / month? What media do you print to primarily -

  • Overhead transparencies
  • A4 paper
  • Coated papers
  • Photographic quality papers.
 
I have recently looked at buying a new printer but my problem is how to work out how much it costs to print something, it's okay getting a reasonably priced printer but often it's false economy as the ink/toner turns out to be quite expensive - any advice on how to calculate printing costs, I use a lot of coloured ink. Thanks

Most printers have an inbuilt meter. Put up a sheet of paper on the wall beside the printer. Each time you change a toner cartridge, take a meter reading and make a note of it. You will soon have a good handle on costs.

The reason I suggest the old-fashioned use of a sheet of paper is that printer users will see it and be thereby reminded that toner costs money.
 
I am increasing the amount I print and at the moment I am getting a print company to do the printing for me if I need more than 20 copies but would like to be able to do it myself, I only have a basic printer so I don't think there is a meter on it. I print solid colour onto semi glossy paper, the amount of ink used varies. I know that some companies offer contracts where you pay per page, regardless of the amount of ink used but I'm not sure I want to enter into a contract.
 
I buy my colour laser cartridges from amazon.co.uk - they are cheapest and buy my imaging drum reset chip here .:>

[broken link removed]
 
I'm getting more confused by the minute - what is an imaging drum re-set chip please!
 
Well my Colour laser printer has four cartridges , also known as CYMK ( cyan - yellow - magenta - and black )

It also has an imaging drum .

The imaging drum reads each page you put through the printer . However , if you only print 1/3 of a page , it will be read as a full page .

So you will get a message to say that your imaging drum is empty after a certain number of pages - say 5,000 ) even though it is not empty.

So by buying a reset chip on eBay , I can continue to use the imaging drum for a long long time extra .

BTW , an imaging drum for my HP cost around € 180 and a reset chip cost about € 15

I hope this makes sense .
 
He uses a colour laser with a specified duty-cycle for the imaging-drum which needs a new micro-chip to reset the page-count if the print quality is still acceptable - lasers often need consumables other than ink replaced.
 
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I bought one too! It's wireless, and it prints, scans & copies as well as photos. I bought it for €79 in PC World, but see it's €71.99 in argos.


What the hell, its 230euro now?? Is that the right link?
 
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