printer

[Frank barry]

good morning all I don't know it its ok to post this here please feel free to move if not appropriate


I am looking to buy a small inkjet printer to print small images 25mm ideally I would prefer to print from a roll

any suggestions would be much appreciated


thanks Frank

[Bryan Rocker]

Frank,

I wouldn't buy an inkjet, I would buy a laser printer instead, in the long run they are far more reliable and cheaper to run than any inkjet out there.

Here's a Brother black and white for $100

http://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-2270DW-Compact-Wireless-Networking/dp/B00450DVDY/ref=sr_1_2?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1398097785&sr=1-2&keywords=color+laser+printer

Here's a Brother color laser for $180

http://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL4150CDN-Printer-Duplex-Networking/dp/B00439GOL8/ref=sr_1_2?s=office-products&ie=UTF8&qid=1398097890&sr=1-2&keywords=color+laser+printer

Bryan

[David Somers]

Frank,

Yow.

First...I agree with Bryan. A laser is generally preferable to an ink jet when you look at the long term cost of operating it. A higher price to buy them, but a much lower cost to run them. Ink jets are cheap to buy, but expensive to feed.

A sad example. The manager of a very remote unit I covered, unbeknownst to me, bought a cheap ink jet printer. Then when the ink cartridges it came with ran dry he found the replacements cost more than a new printer, which came with 2 sets of cartridges. So he tossed the existing printer and bought the new one. Rinse, lather and repeat! Go figure. Our purchasing office finally asked me why this manager was buying so many ink jet printers? I called him and asked and he explained his reasoning. Amazing. Anyway...ink is expensive.

I assume though that you had a reason for wanting ink? To be honest, I am not aware of any small ink printers made to take roll paper. Most of the roll printers are larger format. A3 and above. The small roll printers I am aware of are used for point of sales systems and tend to be thermal, or if they are ink they are low res. I have a hard time picturing one of those serving you, at least with my limited knowledge of what you want to do.

Can you describe what you are hoping to do with a bit more detail? We might be able to help you find some models that would work. But off the top of my head, those are the issues I see.

Sorry I couldn't be of more immediate help.

Dave

[Frank barry]

thanks Byrne and David I do a lot of medals so need to print labels to stick on the centre at the moment I buy them printed the problem is it can take 7 to 10days to get to me which is a problem in the perfect world I would like to print from a roll of labels I have seen the Epson tm-c3500 it dose a very nice job but costs a lot of money cheers Frank

[David Somers]

Frank,

Can you get the same labels in a sheet rather than a roll? That might help since then you could print them in any printer for the most part. And am I correct assuming the labels do not have to be a high res at all? What would you prefer for resolution? Any special reason for asking for inkjet? Or was that mostly an initial purchase cost issue?

One funky thought, again depending on your need....dot matrix? Dot matrix printers still have lots of folded, if not rolled continuous feed forms available. Your labels might be available for that type of printer if the printing would do what you want. The printers are generally pretty inexpensive, and durable as all get out. Just a thought.

Dave

[Frank barry]

thanks Dave I know little or nothing about printers I can just about replace the paper hahah I would want the quality to be pretty good as I also put pictures into pendants
what I am trying to do is get one as good as I can afford and have it for some time I do guess sheets would not be a problem if I am honest I taught the roll was neat
cheers Frank

[David Somers]

Ahhhh. This is making a bit more sense I think.

Do you know what you might want for a duty cycle? Duty Cycle is the printer industries way of saying, "how many pages a month will you be printing?" A low volume might lend itself to inkjet since you would would not be incurring a high monthly cost for the consumable ink cartridges. A moderate to high volume per month would strongly suggest laser and color laser. Some of the lasers can produce a pretty nice photo or graphic and do it fairly quickly, but a good inkjet is going to do that better and most likely faster, though at a much higher cost per page.

At this point you might ask what a low duty cycle is? Well....I am at the extreme low end. If I personally print 40 pages in a month that is a jaw dropping extreme. But most printing companies think of anything under 5000 pages in a month as being a personal or low duty cycle. As a rule of thumb, I don't like to see someone using a printer beyond 60 to 75% of its rated duty cycle. My work deals mostly with larger offices by the way.

If you will be doing something in this range, and you will be doing a fair amount of color printer AND you want an ink jet I would try to shoot for a printer that has a black cartridge, and 3 color cartridges. yellow, blue and red. (yellow cyan and magenta to say it more accurately) The advantage to this is if you happen to do a run of images that is heavy on blue then when your blue cartridge runs out you just replace it and keep going. In a printer that combines the 3 colors into one cartridge, or worse, includes Black in the one cartridge as well, then when you run out of any one color the whole cartridge is dead to you, even if the other colors have barely been touched. You can get a printer like this in the lower price ranges by the way. Higher end printers often have more colors included as they try to speed up printing and provide better control over various tones like face tones. At the size range of image you are talking about I don't see any need to go that far.

As a rule of thumb, if you get 3,000 pages out of an ink cartridge that is VERY good. I would expect a number closer to 1000 pages realistically. The more ink you print on a page the lower that will go, quickly.
In a low end laser printer a cartridge will often go 15 to 20,000 pages before running out.

And yes, there is a standard page, color and black and white, that is used to determine the capacity of a printer ink or laser cartridge.

The other thing to think about is longevity. Some ink jet printers offer archival inks that supposedly last a very significant period of time. Some will exhibit very noticeable fading after a few hours sitting in direct sunlight. Be sure you know what you want and what the printer can do.

Lasers tend to be more fade resistant than all but the better archival inks. Lasers tend to be more moisture resistant than most ink jet formulas. Though you can get water resistant inks. Another type of laser is one like the Xerox models that use wax rather than normal laser toner. They are highly fade resistant and water resistant. And they don't put fine laser toner particles into the air which many people in an office may be concerned about with standard lasers. We are no where near having long term data on these particles and their health effects however.

And lastly, you want to see if you can run some test prints of what you might typically want to print. See what the printer is going to do for you.

Hope this helps a bit! See if that helps you narrow down what you might like to consider for a type of printer. I can try to suggest some models for you from there. Or take that info to a local shop that has some knowledgable sales people. Or better yet, contact the manufacturer for more info on models that might best support your needs.

Dave

[Frank barry]

wow David you know a lot about printers I am glad I posted now as with most things I try to buy the best I can get and afford and in that way I just buy once I will read through your post above and try to answer some of the questions you posed thanks for your input its much appreciated Frank