full colour page print cost question (TEKTRONIX PHASER 850)

  • Thread starter Thread starter JH
  • Start date Start date
J

JH

Hi,

I'm considering purchasing a TEKTRONIX PHASER 850 to print booklets. I
have assessed the costs to be very good for black and white printing,
but our booklets have a full colour cover which concerns me a little
cost wise.

The booklets are A5 size, so half of an A4 sheet is full colour. The
back of the booklet will have some colour on but not very much.

I am aware that page life of cartridges is messaged on 5% coverage. So
in other words what I'm asking is will a colour cartridge with a 1000
page life run out extremely quickly if I print 850 A4 sheets with half
colour? How many cartridges would I go through?

Thanks
JH
 
I just posted a response to another of your postings but this one gives
more information. If you were to only print in full color on half the
area, you can double the number of pages you will output from the CMY
ink blocks, or 300 to 160 again depending on how much color area you are
filling (based upon 30-60% coverage per color (CMY).

Keep in mind that areas of solid color which are blue (CM), green (CY)
or red (MY) use two colors and browns and some grays may use all 3.

Art
 
Hi,

I'm considering purchasing a TEKTRONIX PHASER 850 to print booklets. I
have assessed the costs to be very good for black and white printing,
but our booklets have a full colour cover which concerns me a little
cost wise.

The booklets are A5 size, so half of an A4 sheet is full colour. The
back of the booklet will have some colour on but not very much.

I am aware that page life of cartridges is messaged on 5% coverage. So
in other words what I'm asking is will a colour cartridge with a 1000
page life run out extremely quickly if I print 850 A4 sheets with half
colour? How many cartridges would I go through?
Click to expand...

You can look at the data for a Canon Pixma ip4000:
440 pages at 5% coverage per ink tank¹
Cyan: 550 pages, Magenta: 430 pages,
Yellow: 360 pages (Printing ISO/JIS-SCID N5)¹

So if you do not have individual toners, the yellow will die
way before the cyan.

Looking here you can get an idea about how the picture looks:
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&q=iso+scid&btnG=Search

And it has way more white than a normal picture.

Generally, expect color to cost at least 3-4 times price of b/w.
 
I know everyone is just using this for comparison's sake but the 850 uses
the "solid ink blocks" & not any sort of cartridge.
Each block looks a little like one of those vermin killing blocks. The
machine holds about 3 or 4 of each colour & you can pop one in even in the
middle of a print job.
Another comment was about the extreme useage of "ink" or more to the
point... wax. That is right & it pays NEVER to turn off the machine. It goes
into standby mode & only uses about 60watts which will cost you much less
that wasting a heap of wax each time you start it from "cold".
For curiosities sake I tried to monitor the useage for you JH, but it is
really hard to do.
The machine works like this.........
First you have the blocks lined up with a heater plate at the end of them.
This plate only works ocassionly to top up a resevior inside the "head"
part.
I measured each colour down to the last mili-metre & started printing.
After 10 pages I had used NO colour but 7mm of black.
After another 20 pages I had used no more black but had used 7mm of cyan.
After another 30 pages I only used the remaining two colours.
In other words it only uses some of the solid blocks just to top up the
resevoir. Not sure if I explained it properly but I tried.
To get an acurate idea you need to write down the number of print copies the
machine has done & keep a GOOD record of blocks used & pages printed for
5000 or 10000 pages & then work it out on averages.
By the way JH, what are you using for design etc? Publisher?
If you like you can send me a copy of the colour page & I might be able to
give you a better idea because that lady I got the 850 for is about to do a
big job similar to yours & I told her to keep a record of ink useage.
Just take one of the @'s out... bruce9950@@hotmail.com
BruceM
 
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