HP Indigo - is it worth the price

[alamos]

I understand HP Indigo as best digital printer out there (can work 24/7 and is more offset press that digital printer). We are thinking about buying it but after I spent few hours in MS Excel, I am asking if it is really worth the price.

We currently running KM c8000 press with approx. 120 000 A3 impressions per month. Machine is working very well, but we have to run it for 2 shifts to handle the volume (we are running mainly heavy stocks, so printing is quite slow). Also the front/back registration is not 100% reliable so you have to adjust it few times a day and finally service must visit us at least once a week for few hours maintenance. This all is not some big pain but it consumes time and quality of output and meeting the deadlines is somewhere near 90% because of these issues.

On the other hand we have HP Indigo 3550 which as I know should eat this volume for breakfast, where the front/back registration is comparable to offset machines, output is flat and easy to process in post-press operations and maintenance cycles are much bigger then in case of KM c8000.

The problem is see is the difference in price of click which we have for KM c8000 and which HP offered us. For KM it is $.04 CMYK per click and for HP it is $.06 per CMYK click. Plus you have to pay $2400 maintenance fee each month to HP. The higher the volume, the bigger the price difference, so there is actually no Break Even Point and this scares me the most.

So my question is:
- Is the cost of click HP offered me standard one, because it is really high and according to heir offer it won't be lower in case of higher volumes?
- Owners of HP Indigo ... is the machine worth of such price difference?

 

[kdw75]

It seems to me like your volumes are way low to be looking at such an expensive machine. We are doing around 100,000 per month on a Xerox 560 and almost all of those are on 13x19 gloss sheets. We are looking at upgrading to a C or J 75 though.

 

[JustinB]

If you're happy with the KM, why not just add a second one? Could you eliminate the second shift and all those labor hours with 2 machines?

Can you pay cash or do you have to finance? If you add the HP, what happens to the KM? Sell it? return it? HP buys it out?

Do you forecast your business growing so much that the HP will be necessary?

Can the same employees operate the HP or do you need to bring on someone with more experience?

Does the $2400 include any clicks (40,000 by my calculations) or is that in addition to clicks? (so running just 1 click per month would cost you $2400.06)

If you run 120k clicks @ .06 + $2400, it's really costing you $.08 per click. (So your monthly click payments go up by $4800 compared to what they are now)

If a second c8000 costs you anything less than $4800 per month, then isn't that a better investment? (Redundancy + lower costs compared to the indigo)

Just my two cents

 

[alamos]

Thank you for your reply JustinB, I see it in the same way. (You are right that one click on indigo will actually cost $.08).
That is why I don't understand how such machine makes financial sense for so many businesses.

kdw75 yes our volume is quite low for indigo now, but it is growing rapidly (approx 100% a year), so we are expecting approx. 250 000 clicks at the end of next year. But still according to calculations it makes sense to have up to 4KMs instead of 1 HP.

 

[kdw75]

I think the companies that are using high end machines like the Indigo are really running them hard to make them profitable. I am thinking at least two shifts.

 

[alamos]

But if KM has half price for click, wouldn't it be more clever for them to run few KMs instead of Indigo? That is what I don't understand. With such click charge, the machine can only be interesting for you if you are running spot color jobs or printing on plastic, but even if your volume will be 10 000 000 clicks per month, it will make more economic sense to buy 20KMs instead of 5 Indigos or am I missing something?

 

[TheProcessIStheproduct]

Some people are will to pay premium for not seeing tech one a week, as offset guy it pains me to see them once a year...

 

[JustinB]

I learned this in business school:

If Machine A is only functional 80% of the time and Machine B is also only functional 80% of the time, your total equipment reliability is only 64%. That's low. (We all take the risk that both machines won't go down simultaneously)

Perhaps the Indigo is exceptionally reliable and the downtime (lost productivity) is more expensive than the machine?

I'm fairly confident that companies with very deep pockets (read: clout) don't pay $.08 per click.

Opinions?

 

[alamos]

Thanks JustinB. Your calculation can be used if the two machines are used in Series System (A then B) but 2 KMs are Parallel System (A or B).

In that case reliability is calculated like this in case of 80% reliability: Total reliability=1-(1-0.8)squared
So reliability of 2 KMs is 96%.
For 4 KMs it is already 99.84% (which is far more than one Indigo can provide).

So if company can not afford downtime, it can just buy few more cheap KMs or? (Anyway I think you are right, that $.08 is just high price, do anyone has some other info about click charges on Indigo?)

 

[dabob]

Is this a question about price or qualtiy . .. if its all about costs - anything beats an Indigo . . . but then an ABDick beats a heidelberge . . . hands down . . . but if its about quality the reverse is true . . the Indigo, when running to spec is the best digital machine out there (The I Gen and Nexpress) are pretty close. I had owned an Indigo from 2001 until recently - took a look as some of the higher end xeroxes and made the decision that the xerox was finally "Good Enough" for the work we were doing. We didn't need the heavy maintenance and slow production of the Indigo anymore . . . so if its overall balance or your customer base is happy with what your doing - dont break it . .. that said, if you are looking for new markets in a higher quality world I would seriously consider the Indigo . . .

just My 2 cents . . .

 

[poppin]

I have an acquaintance using an Indigo 3050 for more than 5 years and it is still running perfectly. Hence, for a normal Xerox, KM or Ricoh digital press, costs amortized over max life span of 5 years, versus Indigo's. That's one of the reasons why Indigo sells. However, downside of Indigo is the operator. From the region I am in, HP trains operator of no prior Indigo knowledge at USD$4500. With such personnel in scarcity, bosses often get held ransom by these trained staff.

In my friend's case, the operator is a Filipino, engaged all the way from Dubai, where he worked at for more than 5 years on an Indigo.

 

[sudomark3]

Agree with what the others say (who have far more experience than I with the indigo.) I've had a few items run on an indigo with great results. The docucolor on the other hand will probably give you a lower cost per print for color for general printing (flyers, newsletters, rack cards, posters, reports, short run publications, etc.)

 

[RGPW17100]

Finishing is also a big plus for the indigo. Because they use a paste type ink instead of toner bindery people can put nice scores and folds without cracking. Static electricity is also much lower on the indigo. We had a 6060 which at the time had the same engine as the Igen and we were running an HP 2000. The 6060 was a loner that we had for 6 months. We were happy to get rid of the 6060 and purchase an H3050 instead.

 

[alamos]

Finishing is also a big plus for the indigo. Because they use a paste type ink instead of toner bindery people can put nice scores and folds without cracking. Static electricity is also much lower on the indigo. We had a 6060 which at the time had the same engine as the Igen and we were running an HP 2000. The 6060 was a loner that we had for 6 months. We were happy to get rid of the 6060 and purchase an H3050 instead.

Hi, was the difference in click price worth the benefits? In our case difference in click price between KM and HP is almost double. Was i same in your case of 6060 vs H3050?

 

[RGPW17100]

I know our click rates are higher. Our main printing is done offset and the indigo is mainly for short run. We have an agreement with Indigo where if we hit 400,000 clicks per month our last 100,000 clicks are free. Indigo clicks are based on one color and we have a special agreement with black only clicks. Sorry cant help you on specifics. All I can tell you that I am a press operator, Indigo operator and a bindery worker when needed. I have seen cannon, Igen, nexpress and indigo and when it comes to finishing like roll folds on card stock, die cutting laminating the indigo is the best I have seen. I would guess with that you would pay more. Indigo biggest weekness is printing any ink build over 265 percent. Scratching and ink peeling off become an issue. Also with higher clicks also come a higher paper cost. Indigo will only print on certain surfaces. Stocks like Husky, Lynx, Sterling the ink will not stick. You have to buy and use indigo approved stocks. If you are satisfied with the quality of your machine I would do what was mentioned before and get another machine. Most operators can run multiple machines at the same time so you should not have to increase your work force.

 

[Mark Flanders]

Greetings,

As someone who loves HP Indigo presses, it pains me to say that you should probably hold off until you have a lot more volume. They are great machines, but not cheap to own or run. Stick with what works for you and play it safe. Trust your instinct. To be sure, the really big volume customers get to negotiate click charges when they look at new machines and such, but even so, they pay more than the dry toner machines. At some point, you might make the jump. Good luck.

 

[davarino]

We dealt with this set of questions a year or so back and we came to the decision that there was nothing that the Indigo offered at that time that was worth the extra expense for our purposes.

If your present equipment is satisfactory and you can sell more of the same kind of work, expand with the KM.

If you wish to expand into a different market (usually an uncertainty for success), look more closely at the Indigo... but you had better get your salespeople to think differently about value of what they sell and even about what it is that they "do" sell. This, I believe, is the hardest obstacle.