Beegee
Lights on, no one home! Id like to know also.

I've been keeping track of usage since I changed inks on my Cadet from Activasol to EcoSol Max.

The results to date are interesting showing average usage of 12ml ink per sq. metre which is costing £2.91 per sq m. In fact the figures are better than this as they do not account for the ink remaining in the cassettes.

This suggests to me that it is arguable that bulk ink systems that have an upfront cost to fit will not show significant cost reductions on the overall cost of printing.

Peter

no disrespect but i cant agree peter...

i recon we pay around £22 for 220ml of ink which is of course the content of a single cart.
topping up of the same cart only applies as and when needed, so you only ever loss this "remaining ink at bottom of the cart, once" saving you more money again because every cart you install you loss the ink left in the bottom each time.

up till i moved to bulk i had to buy 10no. 220ml carts at a time to get them for £50 each, rather than paying the rrp of £75 each. i now pay only £22 each and get more from them.
converting to bulk ink systems is not expensive, some suppliers even give the bulk ink system free when you purchase ex-amount of ink.




.

None taken!

I guess a lot of this discussion is how you use your machine etc. With the problems I experienced from the Activasol inks the wasted vinyl was the bulk cost of running my machine, not the ink. Also B & P seemed to want around £1000 to fit their bulk ink system.

What I can say is that the ink cost with Ecosol Max is exceeding my expectations and represents about 17% print cost. Reducing this significantly will require different inks, new profiles, possibly affect warranties and quality and use a bunch of costly vinyl to get it right! The return on investment just does not seem attractive to me.

If I was to run, say, 5 times as much print, the equation would change, possibly more like yours. In effect the machine cost per sq. metre would reduce making the ink and vinyl cost rise significantly in percentage terms and making savings more significant.

Peter

You lost me there , a simple way of justfying the cost for you here.

Customer bought the new VP-540 , he prints 2 x 1100 x 1700 posters each week for a nightclub, business, he would not have had before , he charges £60 a poster (nightclub previously paid £80) cost of producing poster £1.00 for the paper and £3.00 for the ink , profit made each poster £56 , this is nearly twice as much as he needs for the leasing costs !!
This is not a sales pitch but a true story and opens up a whole new market for him.

Cheers

I'm not sure what point you are making, Cameron, but I think you are reinforcing my opinion. If your guy was to halve his ink cost he would save 1.50 on 60.00 sale i.e. 2.5%. Not significant for the cost/trouble of changing for that job but more meaningful if he had a much higher volume.

By the way, where can I get paper at that price?

Peter

Peter, in all honesty i doubt your problem was the ink. If it were Cadets, grenadiers etc would not be so popular. If you had major issues with your machine printing wrong, then you must have had a faulty machine in some form or another mate.

Bulk ink systems as i have said are relatively inexpensive to buy and in some cases free, depending on the ink/supplier you use.

I may run more prints than you do but we both spend the same money on our ink. the difference is now my ink goes much further for the same money.

That discussion is a can of worms, Rob. Virtually all my pink B & P engineer reports are ink induced/related faults. I have not had a single problem since changing to EcoSol Max and no engineer has been near my machine since last July. The only other problem I used to have was B & P!

Peter