How much ink?

[StewartR]

A colleague and I were just discussing the economics of doing large-scale banner graphic printing ourselves, rather than paying to have it done commercially. He has a printer that's capable of doing it, we can price the vinyl media, but one thing we're struggling with is pricing the ink.

I would have expected that it ought to be possible to find out how much ink a particular printer uses (at a defined X% coverage), expressed in, say, litres per square metre. But we're struggling. Can anybody point to any reference sources? (The exact model of printer probably isn't important at this stage. My colleague has an Epson 9880, but to start with a ballpark figure based on other printers would probably be OK.)

 

[mho]

Stewart, I will get you a figure from my HP Z3200 44" printer, we looked into it and by the time you have installed the eyelets and stitched cord into the outside edges, it just wasnt worth doing it. From my experience the Epson 9880 will use aprox 2-3 times what the HP uses (ive had a lot of epson printers and so far the HP is the most economical with ink, epsons automatic cleaning wastes loads of ink.)

Most large retailers who print vinyl use solvent ink printers.

 

[mho]

I have just averaged all my print jobs for the last 12 months, on various media, Paper and canvas and the figure is 0.3125 ml per square foot.

 

[StewartR]

I have just averaged all my print jobs for the last 12 months, on various media, Paper and canvas and the figure is 0.3125 ml per square foot.

Thanks Mark.

As a sanity check on your figures, 0.3125 ml is 312.5 cubic mm and a square foot is 92903 square mm. So the average thickness of the ink you've been laying down is 0.00336 mm or 3.36 microns. Sounds quite plausible to me.

So if an Epson 9880 uses 2-3 times as much ink, then in very broad terms that's approximately 1 ml per square foot, or maybe 10 ml per square metre.

Thanks very much.

 

[Box Brownie]

Hi Stewart

This thread caught my eye and I hate a mystery so having Googled about it I have come across this https://www.epson.com/prxm/gs6000_calc.html especially where it says this "Ink cost" assumes 1.5 ml of ink used per sq. ft.,

Hopefully that can throw some light on the matter

 

[StewartR]

Hi Stewart

This thread caught my eye and I hate a mystery so having Googled about it I have come across this https://www.epson.com/prxm/gs6000_calc.html especially where it says this "Ink cost" assumes 1.5 ml of ink used per sq. ft.,

Hopefully that can throw some light on the matter

Thanks. You must have used a different set of search words! That's a great find.

 

[Box Brownie]

Glad it has helped

 

[snapalot]

I now wouldn't touch Epson large format printers with a bargepole, after the experiences we had with our 24" 7900. Automatic cleaning was costing a fortune and the only work around to stop it was to tell it to print, wait for the automatic cleaning to start and then cancel the print! We only ever used Epson inks which cost an absolute fortune, not to mention the maintenance tank, which was nearly £35 a time.
We have just invested £5K on a HP Designjet Z5400 postscript printer which uses about a quarter of the ink in comparison with the Epson and the results are stunning each and every time.