Ink usage costing - HP Designjet 5500 and Z2100

[Blue Diamond]

Hi,

Newbie here, registered purely because I'm really struggling to find out info on how you work out costing inks of different sized prints and coverage percentages.

We use a HP Designjet Z2100 24" with HP 70 Vivera inks and an old HP Designjet 5500 48" with HP 83 UV ink. Generally we use the 'Production' setting and typically print on heavy coated bond paper and Kodak water resistant vinyl (banner). Sizes of prints range significantly, anything from A5 to something 3m in length. I'm not part of a print shop, I work as an in-house graphic designer for a chain of garden centres who also prints and distributes POS. So it's not a commercial printing operation.

Finding out the coverage isn't a problem, I found a site where you can upload a jpeg and it will tell you. It's working out what x% ink coverage on any given size costs.

I have talked to HP and they told me something like 1000 pages at 5% coverage? I'm pretty suspicious of that, seems far too low based on my own experience of how long the cartridges last.

I found this page on the HP website:
HP Designjet Printers - Cost Per Copy - c00186744 - HP Business Support Center
Which helps only a little but it's the best resource I've found on the web.

Is it a case of making a guesstimate based on what info you can find? Am I going about this the wrong way?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

EDIT: Oops, just saw the post a few threads down on the exact same thing. Ignore this if you feel like you'll just be repeating what's said in there...

[riky]

I think the Hp guys have over rated the uses, it is not that much.. 1000 pages is too high in reality.





Printed Labels

[Blue Diamond]

Too high? Really? At 5% I would have thought it would have been more than 1000 A4 sheets. I'm not too experienced with the machines so I guess I could be over estimating, they just seem to last for a long time, most of them anyway.

[Corey]

1000 pages does seem high.

[EdgeCreativeSydney]

I got a 5500ps UV, I had to do a print job of 100 A0 poster. It w as full in coverage and I think total ink compined was about 300ml to 400ml. So my cost of ink was less than one cartrage. not bad!

anymore questions feel free to ask.