which laserprinter for designer?

[kuriyaki]

yesterday was asking about the quality-range of the oki c9800... but reading around here maybe i must better ask you about choices before looking at something wrong.

situation:
i'm graphic designer and i need an output printer. principally using it to print our presentations (broschures/catalogues and so) and eventually printing small stuff like factsheets or flyers from our clients.

printing volume actually: 700-1000 sheets/month, we're actually printing at the copyshop.

whe are now thinking buying a printer because we cannot react fast enough by printing at the copyshop. and what we would love to have is a printer whith a very good printquality and color accuracy, Format A3+.

budget range $10'000 - $20'000?

at this moment we want to sell design and are not planning to try to add copyshop-business here, but maybe we need to, since the better quality is too expensive to have only for presentations... i don't know really which way to go... another designer told us about the nice quality of the oki c9800 but we where not so happy with the tests (i posted a photo on my other thread).

maybe can you help us?

thank you in advance for the answers!

 

[JasonFF]

I can't recommend a specific printer to you because I have only worked with Xerox digital presses and I'm not familiar with actual pricing either, but your post raised a thought in my mind. Are the brochures and things you design generally speaking the same sizes? If so, web to print might be a solution for you.

We offer a service to customers where we build them a personalized website that is set up with all the variations of print that they need. Usually this is a business card template, and four or five other standard sizes that they use regularly. We negotiate a price with them that takes into consideration the personalized website we built for them, the amount of print they plan to do, and the deadlines they require.

Many of our web to print customers require next day delivery, and with the W2P system this is feasible, because there is no prepress or Customer Service Rep involved. It goes straight from the upload into our Digital Press' memory, and we print it out first thing in the morning.

It sounds like that kind of set up would work for you. I'm sure there are printers in your area that can offer a similar service.

Another thought: if you plan to print your own material, will you also be scoring, perfing, folding, stitching, and cutting yourself? If you are, you will probably need some more equipment, and if you aren't you may end up with the same delay getting the bindery done.

I hope this helps and please post back with your thoughts or what you ultimately decide.

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Must say i was impressed with the Canon C1+, should be in your budget range. We were looking in to it as a prrofer and possibility to do dummy mags.

 

[kuriyaki]

@jason,
thanks for the inputs! in fact, something like that is what we are doing at the moment with the copyshop here. when possible, we are sending the pdfs remote to print, and the fat files taking them directly. our problem is more that when we are not so flexible when we print mockups, we need to plan more time for the outputs. and that is sometimes a problem whe you stuck on the creative work.

printstuff for clients is not a problem, we can still giving the jobs to the copyshop, but the question we have is: if we want/need to buy a printer with good quality, which options have we? because we started thinking about buying an oki machine, but we found the quality is bad. now we're going to take a look on a xerox 7760, but what is there outside? if we go to a KM5601 for example, are we going to see noticeably better quality? or are these machines just workhorses for produktion? we are going to ask and test printers, but i was just wondering which are the segments of quality and price ranges, since we don't have any supplier to ask at the moment. and maybe i can pick a cuple of good tips here.

@lukas
i thought the canon c1 was in the range of 30k or more, but maybe i'm wrong... going to ask. thanks for yr reply!

 

[jotterpinky]

I would recommend a Xerox WC7655 or similar unless you feel you need a RIP to adjust profiles etc. Then I would recommend the Xerox 242. You can probably find one used for considerably less. These machines put out excellent quality and are much faster than the C1. If you like the Canon lineup their ImageRunner Advance Color 7000 series might be a good fit, they're much faster than the C1 as well.

 

[ORIS_4COLOR]

Have you considered a small format inkjet proofer with a color mgt rip driving it?
You could certainly get the quality and the output from an epson with a rip for the cost point you described. The consideration would be your print windows....how quickly you need to produce the printed piece and volume or run length.

Beyond the inkjet, I agree with several of the previous posts...the Xerox 242 is a great entry level digital device.

 

[elfidito]

Kuriyaki,
Oki is going to launch a new version of the C9800 called ProColor 930. you should ask an Oki agent for it. They says has improved in quality, performance and reliability. Im not sure about it, but would like to know of somebody that uses it.

 

[viva]

go for xerox phaser 7760

go for xerox phaser 7760

Hi,

I would recomend you for low budget Xerox Phaser 7760. The quality is very nice for the money. Dont bothr with oki, i have seen the bad results in solid areas, it is not smooth and could bring you problems in the future..
Have good luck

_______________________________________
www.vivaprint.cz

 

[tppsg]

Why not lease a copier?

If most of your printouts are high coverage stuff, the amount spent on consumables will be enough to pay for a copier + the click charges.

 

[RNRPRINTINGNMAILING]

It is amazing of the small quantity you want to do.

I get prints and use them as proofs form my Epson 2200 it will print up to 13 x 19

The ink is super cheap the the quality is dead nuts to my Xerox Phaser 7700.

Why not look into one the cost will be around $300.00
You can't go wrong with that.
Good Luck

 

[natty]

I don't know why anyone would consider buying a canon C1 as a 'proofing printer'.

The colour accuracy is not that good... no-where near as good as a epson inkjet... inkjet is the best technology for proofing as it is 100 times more colour accurate (won't drift from one day to the next) and you can get an epson and rip software for a 10th of the price of a canon C1...

Sure, the ink is more expensive than toner, but compare 1200 dpi vs. 3600 dpi... compare a crappy cross-hatch screen technology to inkjet stochastic (fm) screening... If you want quality and colour accuracy purely for proofing you would have to be crazy to consider a laser based device over an inkjet device...

Canon built a machine that at its time was the best quality laser device available... nowadays there are engines that cost the same, will print 5 times faster, have a much higher duty cycle and print just as good...

We have a Canon C1 which is only 2 1/2 years old... Canon offered to trade it in for less than 10% of its original cost !!!! trust me do not buy one of these boxes....

If you want just a proofing device, buy an epson 4800 or 7800 with rip software... the pantone matching is great and the resolution is in-comparable to any laser based press besides say the HP indigo 7000 or Kodak nexpress which are both $800,000 + (AUD)...

Actually a collegue of mine which runs a graphic design business bought the epson 10800 (i think that is the model) wide format which prints approx 1100mm wide as a proofing printer as it earns him good money in a side business of printing photographic prints... the print quality is exceptional and the epsons will print on canvas and as a lot of his clients are artists he can print massive canvas or paper artwork prints... it's a great sideline and still 1/10th of a the investment of a small digital press...

If you want some thing you can run small volume jobs on buy a cheap xerox device such as the phaser as someone suggested... Actually a really cheap and good xerox for this task is the xerox C2255 as it was the first xerox to run the EA toner that is now being used on their flagship range... The colour consistency will drift but it's cheap as chips and is pretty fast for its cost... We bought one just to print envelopes on as it does a great job of this as many of the bigger digital presses have trouble feeding envelopes...

Just my 2c

 

[kuriyaki]

very, very interesting answers... THANK YOU ALL!!!

after all this useful tips we changed our mind about focussing just on a good laser. the price to take a quality good machine is too high for the use we want to give at the moment, and paying the superb laser and not using it really can be a very bad investition... it could be a better choice combining inkjet + laser, continue working with the copyshop + checking if we can take the printvolume to buy the laser at the future...

so now we're going to proof first the way buying an A3/A2 inkjet proof for presentations + a cheaper colour laser for the intern layouts controlling. the big question here are the pageprices... we will see...

thank you all again for helping!