Suggest me a Good Printer that meets our needs for our Organization

[DotMatrix]

Let me tell you, I've no prior knowledge about Printers. Please suggest me a good printer that should help us reduce overall cost in long run.

We are a non-profit educational organization. We do conduct exams for all students from 1st STD to 10th STD. Currently, we're relying on 3rd party printing shops to meet our needs. It costing us huge money which we can save and pass on to students by giving them scholarships.

Our requirements as of now :

Printing Color Brochure on A3 Page : 200k-300k in one month (We will do it only once a year)

If printer can fold brochures as well, that would be good.

Printing Envelope's : 300k in one month (We will do it only once a year)

Printing Question Papers on A3 Page (Black and White) : 300k-500k in one month (We will do it only once a year)

If the printer could staple question papers that would be good too.

Scanning all the answers sheets : 200k in one month (We will do it only once a year)

Printing Certificates on A3 Page : 200K in one month (We will do it only once a year)

All the above processes will be done in different months of the year. One work will be done in only one month.

It should be cost effective. Toner, Ink and other things should be reasonable. Please suggest some good printer brand and models. Can we save money by having our own printer and doing all the things in-house?

Sorry, my English isn't that good. If you're finding any problems in understanding, please let me know.

 

[DiVision]

Hello DotMatrix,

Based on your requirements, you need a printer that prints envelopes (I suppose these are personalized otherwise it make no sense printing those in digital), has a booklet maker, a scanner, has a good capacity both in black and white and color. The quantities specified requires also a printer that has some speed - printing 300K single side color copies at a speed of 70 copies per minutes will take more than 70 hours non stop and of course you will have to stop once in a while to feed paper in it.

Of course, that type of machines comes at a price, and you need staff to operate it... in my opinion, you simply do not have the annual volume to support such a machine. Maybe a used one? but it comes with higher operating cost. I would suggest that you meet with some vendors just to have an idea of what is involved and compare with what you actually pay.

Good luck!

 

[DannyB]

From what I see of your totals i just don't think you have the workload to support the kind of investment you are gonna be making. at the very least you will need a cutter a folder a scanner and a press. We are not talking a small desk size printer either unless you plan on getting a fleet of them. You don't have sizes up but lets assume most of your work is 8 1/2 x 11 when laid out on the sheet which means with most digital presses you can fit 2 up. That means 150,000 sheets a month a machine that has that kind of out put is gonna cost you somewhere around 500,000USD or more then you have click charges and maintenance agreements. a cutter can be as much as 10,000 or more same for the folder. not sure how much a scanner will cost. as the gentlemen above stated you will also need personnel to run your equipment. And not least of all you will need floor space for all of this equipment. My suggestion to you would be to check around and maybe find a competitor of your current print shop and try to get a better price. who knows you might even be able to find someone on this forum that could do that for you.

 

[DJimenez]

I suggest (2) Oki C931.

1 Oki can do b&w and 4 color.
50 letter sheets a min, or 25 A3 per min.
Envelopes A7 1250 per hour

A3 would be 1500 sheets an hour. 300,000/1500=200hours /16hr a day (2shifts), printing would be done in 12.5 days (2shifts one Oki) Or 2 Okis one operator

Oki C931 Printer I have on sale starting at $9,950

or

$15,995.00 with envelope feeder, system includes

• Okidata C931e Print Engine
• Straight Shooter DF330 Envelope Feeder
• Straight Shooter SC-36 Sequencing Conveyor
• EFI Fiery XF Server for Okidata

If you are interested please call me at 206.551.5675 or email [email protected]

 

[jwheeler]

I'm a production printing specialist for Konica Minolta in Southern California so I face these types of questions every day. Sometimes I can recommend equipment to make it cost effective, but as many others have stated, since these are not ongoing quantities, you might be better off continuing to outsource and just look for more competitive pricing. Also, there's not one machine that will do all you need cost effectively as you will still need finishing equipment like a cutter, folder, etc. I'll expand next to each below...

Printing Color Brochure on A3 Page : 200k-300k in one month (We will do it only once a year) This high of a quantity would be most cost effective when ran on an offset press. You haven't defined if it's 1 or 2 sided and what type of paper, but just about every digital press out there is only going to run A3 1 up, so 300k is really 600k clicks when you count both sides. Even on a very aggressive click rate of $0.03 (US), that would be $18,000 us dollars, not including paper, cutting, and labor. You could do it for a half of that cost at a gang run offset printer.

If printer can fold brochures as well, that would be good. A few issues why you wouldn't want to fold in-line. Again, you didn't clarify, but assuming the artwork bleeds, you would want to cut it down and possible crease it before folding. Also, at a volume of 200k-300k, folding off-line would be much faster.

Printing Envelope's : 300k in one month (We will do it only once a year) More details would be helpful here...is it 1 color, 2 color or full color artwork. Either way, offset is going to be the way to go with this kind of volume. In fact, most print shops would print these on flat sheet and then send them out to be converted. If the artwork is 1 or 2 color, they might run this on a small AB Dick or Multi type offset press.

Printing Question Papers on A3 Page (Black and White) : 300k-500k in one month (We will do it only once a year) This is one project that would be great for a black and white digital press. Any of the big names like Konica Minolta, Xerox, Canon have b/w printers that can handle this volume easily. At Konica Minolta, I have many customers using our bizhub PRESS 1250 or 2250 doing this kind of volume and more every month. The only issue with you is that you only do it once a year. So investing in a copier like that would not really make alot of sense.

If the printer could staple question papers that would be good too. Yes, every digital press can add a staple function.

Scanning all the answers sheets : 200k in one month (We will do it only once a year) The document scanners on most any press can handle this volume, but since it looks like getting a printer would not be a fit, I would recommend a high volume desktop scanner from a vendor like Kodak or Fujitsu. They both have very high speed scanners where you can load 500 sheets of paper and let 'er rip.

Printing Certificates on A3 Page : 200K in one month (We will do it only once a year) Need more details here...what color is the printing... full color or b/w and on what type of paper. If b/w, you might be able to make more of a justification for the b/w printer as mentioned above.

 

[lilymorales0191]

Try this site.. Got mine here.

 

[AP90]

Try this site.. Got mine here.

Im sure you did since it says in your profile that you work for them....