Need to reduce toner usage

[jdodoubleg]

I'm running 23,000 13x19 double sided full bleed (2up 8.5x11 trifolds) for a total of 46000 pieces. The artwork is about 80% black. I am going through a black toner bottle around every 2000 sheets. I have the rendering intent set to "relative colorimetric" on the fiery so that it uses other toners to make a rich black - this is what I thought of to help reduce the black usage - not sure it is working though.

I am getting a little pushback from my service provider considering the number of toners I have requested.

Is there some other way I can reduce the amount of black toner without drastically changing the look of the piece?

This is on a Ricoh c7210x with Fiery

 

[gregbatch]

I'm showing 45,000 page yield @ 8.75% coverage letter size. Sounds like you are doing quite well for the coverage. Tell your service provider to take it up with the salesman that showed you all the wonderful things the machine could do, including solid coverage.

 

[namelessentity]

They likely think you're trying to sell the toner. we've had issues in the past trying to get extra toner for big runs. I contacted my sales guy about it and now they let me order 28 bottles at a time .

 

[cqb1988]

you can select toner save mode for Ricoh machines. no visual difference for most of the jobs.

Ricoh has @remote problem which will monitor the supplies usage and send the toner automatically, no need to order.

 

[kslight]

I have no issues requesting more toner than I immediately need on my 7210. You may have to explain it to them or your sales rep but I’ve never had any vendor tell me I absolutely can’t use as much toner as I use.

 

[MailGuru]

Had that happen to me many years ago. Really ticked me off. I was in sales at the time, and, the vendor was absolutely not going to send me more toner than our average monthly usage. I had to say, "look, if I'm doing my job right, next month I will need more toner than I used this month. The month after that, I will need more toner than I will use next month, and so on. What you're telling me is to STOP SELLING because we won't be able to get the toner to run the jobs with -- is that correct?"

I had toner the next day, and, never had another problem with them.

 

[pippip]

Sorry i know its no help but why didn't you outsource to litho with such a volume?

 

[jdodoubleg]

Sorry i know its no help but why didn't you outsource to litho with such a volume?

Good question, but we don't outsource anything. I had a 39,000 run just 2 weeks ago and didn't have toner issues. It just so happens with this job being so black heavy, it was kind of an anomaly for us.

 

[jdodoubleg]

you can select toner save mode for Ricoh machines. no visual difference for most of the jobs.

Ricoh has @remote problem which will monitor the supplies usage and send the toner automatically, no need to order.

That must be through Ricoh corporate or something like it. Our toner, supplies and service are all tied up in a contract with our vendor.

 

[pippip]

Good question, but we don't outsource anything. I had a 39,000 run just 2 weeks ago and didn't have toner issues. It just so happens with this job being so black heavy, it was kind of an anomaly for us.

That's mad. I regularly have jobs where outsourcing is less that my click charge alone would be on the job.

 

[pippip]

Is the background solid. Could you adjust the artwork yourself to a better cymk breakdown.

 

[jdodoubleg]

Is the background solid. Could you adjust the artwork yourself to a better cymk breakdown.

It is a solid. Ended up being too late to adjust this one, but we are working on some rich black samples to see how we can print in the future.

 

[jdodoubleg]

That's mad. I regularly have jobs where outsourcing is less that my click charge alone would be on the job.

Yep, but it isn't up to me.

 

[AP90]

Im surprised your toner supplier is pushing back this much. Just tell them your making up for all the times you've printed text only sheets and its averaging itself out.

 

[TJPrinter]

Even if you change the 80% black to use more cmy you'll still use a lot of toner, just not as much black. When I first saw the quantity you were running I figured there was a good reason you were running it on the Ricoh, variable data or something else. Too bad the boss won't consider outsourcing a run this size.

Every service contract I've had with Xerox and Canon had a small blurb in it that allowed them to charge extra for more than normal toner usage if needed. It has never happened but it always bothers me that it's there. Like others have said, a talk to your sales rep about why you need more toner for the job should straighten things out.

 

[gregbatch]

I too assumed this was a variable data job. Not only is it costing 3+X more, it is adding unnecessary wear to the machine.

 

[bcr]

Is the background solid. Could you adjust the artwork yourself to a better cymk breakdown.

am i being dumb or would this not then mean they're paying for colour clicks instead of BW?

 

[pippip]

am i being dumb or would this not then mean they're paying for colour clicks instead of BW?

The op mentions changing to relative colorimetric to have the cym make a richer black so my assumption is it's a cymk job with a heavy black element to the design. Nobody has mentioned it being a simple BW job.

My suggestion was just a manual way of achieving what the op expected the relative colorimetric to alter.