Advice on A3 Mono Laser

[pickers]

Hi guys,

I'm the design editor for my college newsletter and we want to start printing it in-house. We are currently printing in black and white and it costs us £165 for a run of 300 12 page booklets. It is pretty pricey and we want to save money so were thinking of buying a monochrome A3 laser to print it off. I was looking at Dabs and they start at £700 which seemed a bit pricey, so I was wondering if you guys knew of anything cheaper (but can deal with a high output and is cost effective).

Cheers,

Pickers

[Moby-Dick]

was this the printer you found ?
http://www.dabs.com/uk/productView.htm?quicklinx=2BPT

I dont think you'll beat that price , though its marketed as a personal/small work group printer.

it should be reasonably cheap to run ( toner carts just have toner , not 1/2 the print engine like the HP ones used to )

If you are printing booklets , you would probably also want a duplexer unit ( another £300 or so )

Which ever way you do it, i think it will cost you £1000 ( +toner )

look at it this way ( assuming a monthly letter )

current costs

£165 x 12 months = £1980

Assuming £1000 on a printer

in house costs....

£1000 + approx 16 toner carts - at 7000 prints per cart ) £800 + 45 reams of paper £200

so a rough cost of £2000 for the 1st year.

this assumes that each letter is 6 sheets of A3, double sided.

this also assumes that you dont make any mistakes on the print run.

what about the time it takes to print & collate ( I assume your print hose does this for you ? )

are you really sure you want to print in house ?

[nichomach]

Hi guys,

I'm the design editor for my college newsletter and we want to start printing it in-house. We are currently printing in black and white and it costs us £165 for a run of 300 12 page booklets. It is pretty pricey and we want to save money so were thinking of buying a monochrome A3 laser to print it off. I was looking at Dabs and they start at £700 which seemed a bit pricey, so I was wondering if you guys knew of anything cheaper (but can deal with a high output and is cost effective).

Cheers,

Pickers

Do you have any high volume A3 capable photocopiers in the building - I'm thinking of things like Ricoh Aficios or some of the big Minoltas or Canons or something like that? Some of those will work w/something like a Fiery controller and they're hellaciously fast boxes, also cost per page is v. low. Also most will do duplexing as standard anyway - why buy a slow laser when you can convert a very very fast copier . I don't know what size of institution you're in, though.