Laser Printer advice please...

[southdevonplayers]

Home printing laser printer reccomendations.

I joined to ask about this, as my theatre co is going to be high, and dry and having to internally print all our posters, programmes etc, which need to be glossy and nice.

Due to our local print shop closing, (we are in rural England!) and the incredible prices quoted to us by Staples (£3 per A3 black & white photocopy so goodness knows what colour would be), and another local print shop saying they need to always send work from new clients to head office to be "approved" before they print it in case the content is "unethical", which can take a few weeks, (why?) and the other ones not replying to my request for quotes, I am looking to invest in a colour laser printer to do our posters up to A3, in-house. It seems to be the only feasable option!

I have a budget of up to £150 for the printer (plus anything we make from our panto raffle), and am wondering what you would say is the most reliable to get, with decent print heads (my inkjet isn't good enough for quality poster printing. I have an HP, where the printheads are built into the inks so they are changed each time the cartridges are changed, which I think is brilliant. Before that I had a string of 2 Epsons, but the print heads were built into the printer and gave out within a few weeks. I am not sure if laser printers work the same way, and if so, I would be looking for something with easily replaceable print heads, the Epson saga left me paranoid!!)

Thanks for all helps. No print shop recommendations, please, we have absolutely had it up to the eyeballs with being messed about and spoken down to because we are "only theatre", just thoughts on good laser printers.

 

[paulears]

£150? That's not even going to get you an ink jet! Which is no good whatsoever for multi runs. Laser's also may cost you your budget for a new set of toner - and it doesn't last long. Most show bills come in the post anyway, so why not find a decent printer who is remote and does deliveries? I'd bet this is easier. If you buy even a modest A3 colour laser, they're going to be six hundred quid, pretty slow and unreliable once you've knocked off a few hundred. My Samsung A4 laser is now three years old and costs me two hundred quid a year in toner, for what for me is only modest numbers. print shops never buy, they always rent their printers and copiers for exactly this reason, and pay per copy. The staples price is ludicrous, of course. http://hanwayprint.com/product_info?c_product_id=578
50p per A3?

 

[southdevonplayers]

Inkjets have always come in at under £100 for us. New. All-in-ones. We have been told that lasers can be got for £60 (obviously to the sky's the limit, the same as with anything).
A decent printer would be good, but you say that you do theatre and they laugh in your face, wont do it, or send you scrappy stuff, and say its fine because you are only a theatre company. The small family run one that we did go to is closing, and having contacted at least 15 other printers and had either rudeness or no reply, its pointless outsourcing.

That site you gave actually says that A3s are over £4 each. Not 50p.

 

[Raw Rob]

You might get a b+w A4 laser for £60, but A3 colour, I don't think so. Laser printers don't work anything like ink jets, no print heads. (Toner is the ink, and the drum is also replaceable.)
As above, I would recommend an online print shop. Price depends on how many posters you are having printed. I've used this company several times before and they are excellent (although I use them for flyers not posters): http://www.alocalprinter.com/uk/posters/

 

[kulture]

If you want to print you own A3 then its either thousands for a decent laser, or an inkjet. There are only a few A3 inkjets. One by Epson which I bought and returned to Amazon within a week (the printer just could not reliably handle A3 paper without bending a corner or putting a streak of black across part of it) and the HP 7110 which is OK and not too expensive to run.

Depending on your printing volumes, then consider a decent A4 colour laser for the bulk and the inkjet for the few A3.

Either way look hard at the long term running costs. A cheap printer may have a low initial cost but eat money in ink/toner/replacement parts. Over a typical 3 year life a cheap printer could cost thousands more than a decent but more expensive printer.

 

[paulears]

I'm currently in an Opera House, and they are saving money whenever they can like most arts venues - it's big and has a five person marketing team. If they could do it themselves, they would, but their colour A3 they have is a big office one, and cost wise, more than 10 A3 means external suppliers are cheaper! Ten minutes on Google shows you you can get domestic machines at silly prices, but the consumables are VERY expensive. Office machines start at the prices we suggest. It's like buying a £25 Fresnel on ebay and discovering lamps are £50 and only last 50 hours.

As for that site - I can get 100 A3s for just over 42p - Not sure why you think they're expensive - and I've used on-line for years now and bar one, they've been great, and I only lost that one when they went bust. Phone them up and sometimes it's even better - factor in delivery, though.

PS, don't forget cheap printers also take a LONG time, jam up, clog, get toner clumps.

There really is NO problem here - I work in theatre, and everyone does this - it's no big deal!

 

[DavidWH]

HOW MUCH FOR AN A3 POSTER!

Staples are notorious for their high price for 'Convenience' and why a print shop needs to send a file to head office for approval I am not sure. Provided it's legal - What's the problem?

What volume of posters will you print?
Are you bothered if your posters have a white edge around them?
Will you look to print leaflets/flyers in the machine?

 

[Karimbo]

I got a brother mfc9450cdn from freecycle.
Even had toner!!

The problem was that the pickup roller was worn a little and coated with paper dust - so lost its grip. Previous owner didn't bother trying to fix it. I just gave it a wipe with IPA and it worked brilliantly.

There are so many appliances people throw away when a tiny bit of service can restore it to life.

It is aged, so the drum, imaging unit etc are halfway through their life cycle. But I can't fault it - it works brilliant.

There are laser printers on offer on freecycle all the time.

 

[paulears]

My toner in my samsung just ran out - a pack of four CMYK just cost me £120!

 

[lumencreative]

Just a suggestion, but can you justify the expense of leasing a printer? We lease a large A3 colour Scanner/Copier/Laser Printer which stands on the floor. It costs us £70 per month for the printer rental and the prints are charged at 4.2p per A4 colour (or 8.4p per A3 colour). B&W are charged at 0.5p per A4 page.

 

[The Byre]

50 x A3 posters cost £18 at Mixam. 100 x A2 cost £58. Add VAT and postage.

Most printers come in at about that price, just go to you local printer with a decent PDF in CMYK format.

Mucking about with some Mickey Mouse domestic desktop printers is a mug's game!

 

[Karimbo]

My toner in my samsung just ran out - a pack of four CMYK just cost me £120!

you can refill them, I know people shun this as it "void warranty" and all sorts of scare stories. But that's the benefit of having an old printer that you dont care about. You're not bothered if you mess it up or "void warranty".

The Brother cartridge even has easy to open/close fill hole from the factory.

It costs me £4.60 for 40g of toner powder which fills the entire toner cartridge. Job done.

It's as good as factory toner - print evenly and has no fading at all.

 

[Karimbo]

No print shop recommendations, please, we have absolutely had it up to the eyeballs with being messed about and spoken down to because we are "only theatre", just thoughts on good laser printers.

You will get good rates if you do volume. Whether you do 1 copy or 100 copies - it's the same amount of work for them. Also a high street printer might not be the cheapest purely because of rates and rents of the property. If you order online and in reasonable batch sizes you can get very good prices.

An online print shop can be run by from a spare room with no business rates, rent or additional employees. A high street equivalent needs to have at least 2 staff and expensive overheads. So that can have a massive affect on cost.

 

[14Steve14]

Have a quick look on printerland. co. uk for A3 colour laser printers and you will see what others are saying. Cheapest starts at just under £500-00 plus VAT. Can you now see what you will get for your money - nothing.

Looking on the same site for A4 inkjet printers you get many results which fit your budget. If you are not getting good results from an inkjet printer have you tried using a good quality paper and resetting some of the printers settings. Changing the printers dpi will have a huge effect on the print quality and using a good paper will prevent ink bleed.

 

[DavidWH]

No print shop recommendations, please, we have absolutely had it up to the eyeballs with being messed about and spoken down to because we are "only theatre", just thoughts on good laser printers.

With all due respect I suspect it has nothing to do with being a theatre.

Send an e-mail with exactly what you require, size, quantity, finish, paper. Don't mention you it will be a repeat order every x weeks, as a job that size it'll make little difference. Perhaps send a sample of the artwork.

As mentioned printing 1 poster is often an inconvenience, with setting up artwork (if supplied incorrectly) printing and trimming it, whether you had 1 or 100 it takes the same time with exception of the print time.

I'm confident we can do A3 colour prints less than staples do B&W depending on volumes would the carriage would make it uneconomical?

 

[Karimbo]

Don't mention you it will be a repeat order every x weeks,

My bullshit meter goes off the charts when someone tells me they plan on repeat ordering.

All my clients who've ordered from me over and over again NEVER told me they were going to do repeat orders further down the line.

Overwhelming majority of my prospects who told me they were going to be repeat customers prior to receiving a quote did not order at all.

When I hear "repeat orders" on initial enquiry I just interpret that as bullshit and a ploy to get an undeserving discount.

I work in reverse. I provide 15% recurring discount to repeat customers. I don't give any discount to first orders.

 

[DavidWH]

We're the same.

We've heard it too often too. "I've got x vans, do me a good price and if I like the first you can have the rest" we tend not to do the first ;-)

Plus the half arsed emails. "How much for some business cards?" No quantities or any other details.