Call Xante and ask them to send you the sample kit that lists the cost per page of each sample print (compared to a printing press, though I find those latter figures doubious.) Then take the example cost of the sample which best matches the average % coverage you'll be printing real-world, decide whether you want to use non-OEM toner, etc. and you can calculate how you might reduce your own cost per print. Finally there is the issue of how far you can push durables and maintenance items depending on the difficulty of your prints (patterns vs. solids, solid color makeup, etc.).

thank you very much jeff.
a fellow told me that a cost at about 0.20cents/page A4 one side is ok.
the cmyk ink costs in greece 1000euro.
I am planning to find another supplier from outside greece.But i want the original cartridges.If someone knows sthing that it would very helpful.

That's in the ballpark from the samples I was looking at if the coverage is medium-light to medium.

THANKS AGAIN JEFF.AS IT CONSERNS THE COST SAMPLE,THEY TOLD ME IF THEY HAVE IT THEY ARE GONNA SEND IT TO ME.IS IT DIFFICULT FOR YOU TO MAIL IT TO ME?
IS IT TRUE THAT IN PORTUGAL THE ILLUMINA ORIGINAL CMYK TONERS COST AT ABOUT 600euro?

After investigating the Xante Illumina and Oki 9000 series printers, I jumped half way into the water and bought 2 brand new Oki 9300dxn machines on EBay for a great price. Since the Illumina lists for about $8000, and I bought two of these for $3000, I figured I was off to a good start. I was right . . . for once. The 9300 model is discontinued, but it has the advantage of not having a chip on the toner cartridge. Evidently Oki added a chip to their toner cartridges to make it more difficult for people to refill cartridges with aftermarket toner.

I regularly use the printers to print on 15 pt tag stock and the output is fine for my purposes. The 9000 series printers use a glossy toner that really kicks the output up a notch. I also use the machines for lots of other small run jobs with great results. I routinely run 12 up business cards on all types of 80 lb cover stock. Yesterday I ran a short run (600 copies) of 2 part Digital Carbonless Paper without a problem. Since the cost of original Oki toner cartridges is so outrageous, I was forced to experiment with compatible aftermarket toner and reuse the Oki cartridges. It was a great success.

My goal was to find out if aftermarket toner gave the same results as OEM toner without destroying the Image drums and/or the machine. I got really confused after reading various posts about aftermarket toner. Some says it's fine, and others say it's the Devil hisself.

The experiment:
I printed 3500 tabloid size brochures printed on both sides, mostly in reflex blue (Cyan and Magenta) at about 25% coverage. 3500 tabloid size printed both sides equals 14000 letter size copies printed on 1 side.

I started with everything in the machine OEM. Then, when the Oki Cyan cartridge said it was empty, I refilled it with Dubber's toner that I bought on EBay. I then ran the job until the Dubber toner ran out and replaced the Cyan cartridge with another genuine Oki cartridge with Oki toner.

The Dubber toner looked and worked fine, and so far I haven't seen any problems with the Cyan image drum. The only difference I noticed between the Dubber toner and the Oki toner is that the Dubber toner isn't quite as glossy. For the amount of money saved, I can live with that.

Refilling the cartridges:
I took a Cyan starter cartridge from a 9300 and emptied out the toner that was left in it after the machine said it was empty. There was 62 grams of toner left.

Since a full cartridge holds about 450 grams, I figure they put half that (225 grams) in the starter cartridge. If I'm right, that means that about 13% of the toner was left in the cartridge when the machine said it was empty.

I pulled the non-handle end off of the cartridge and dumped the waste toner from the compartment, in the back half of the cartridge, in a trash barrel. That end of the cartridge has four little tabs that you just spread apart and then pull the end off. It just snaps back into place. You have to be careful to put the stirring rod that is in the new toner compartment, in the front half of the cartridge, into the center of the white plastic gear in the end piece before snapping it back together.

I bought a set of CMYK compatible toners from Dubber Toner on Ebay for $250.00 including shipping. The toner arrived fast! The labels on the bottles said that the toner was for Oki 9000, 9200, 9400 series printers. I called Dubber and told them I had ordered toner for a 9300. The girl said it's no problem. "That toner will work in your printer". Naturally, I asked why 9300 wasn't listed on the label. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes, came back on and said that some people won't buy toner unless their specific model is named on the label. I guess that means that they use the same toner, and put different labels on it to satisfy the marketplace!

I took my 500 gram bottle of Cyan toner and squirted as much as I could into the bottom of the cartridge. There was still a little left in the bottle, so I figure I got about 450 grams into the starter cartridge. It's easy to fill these cartridges. Just turn them upside down, press in a white plastic button on the blue handle, then move the handle until it opens the blue plastic door on the bottom of the cartridge and pour in the toner.

The last thing I did was to reset all the consumables back to "0" with instructions I found in the "fix your own printer" forum.

Waste Toner Note:
It's very important to empty the waste toner compartment when refilling. The waste toner compartment is actually the back half of the cartridge. If it doesn't get emptied, it will eventually clog up and stop various plastic gears from turning and cause error messages concerning the transfer belt. I'm not totally sure where waste toner comes from, but I think it's toner that's left on the image drum after the paper gets its toner. It seems to travel back to the cartridge via an auger (screw) device inside the stud that you push the cartridge onto when you insert the cartridge into the image drum. So far, I'm aware of 3 methods for emptying the waste toner. The simplest, and least effective is to stick something like a pencil into the hole on the non-bluehandle end to open the hole a little bit and then bang the cartridge against a trash barrel to knock the waste toner out. The second method I read about was to cut or melt a hole in the back of the cartridge, shake out the waste toner, then cover up the hole with duct tape. The method I used was to take the whole end of the toner cartridge off. This works fine if the new toner compartment is totally empty, but if it's not, you'll probably lose some good toner. I'm working on that.


Bulk toner - my next adventure:
I really like these machines and intend to keep using them, and it follows that I want to pay as little for toner as possible. So far, I've learned that you can buy 10 kg (22 lb) bags of toner from various suppliers, and cut the cost of toner to about $35 per pound vs. about $60 per pound on Ebay, and probably more than $100 per pound buying it in Oki cartridges.

The obvious questions that arise are - will the stuff kill the image drums, will it print well, is it glossy? (I've gotten addicted to the glossy look on the finished piece).
So far, I don't have many answers, except that it seems the non-glossy toner is more readily available than the glossy. Since it means an outlay of several thousand dollars for four 22 pound bags of CMYK toner, I need to know I'm buying from the right supplier.
I continue to Google. Any input would be appreciated.

I realize this post is ridiculously long, but I think it may be useful to newbees.

Thank you very much for your post mrmunroe -- posts like this are extremely helpful.

Hi:
Your post is very helpful but I wanted to know if I could use oki 9200 toner and drums in place of xante illumina I have a xante illumina and I bought it used and it has been nothing but problems but the drums and toner are so expensive I am trying to find cheaper products and then I saw your ad so if u could respond I really would appreciate it.

Makeinit

Hello everyone.
I'm new here - and new to the entire printing industry. This topic caught my attention because I work for Xante Corporation. The Ilumina can do 502 gsm, an upgrade from the 427. I asked our Engineering department if we did a refillable toner for the Ilumina and was told we do not. We also don't do refurbished units since we are an OEM.
As far as the Ilumina being identical to the Oki C9200 - thats not correct, I'm sorry. Oki is the base engine platform we use, but the coding and internals are far more advanced. Sort of like your Chevy truck having an Isuzu motor. Still cant compare the Isuzu to the Chevy because of the other differences like body panels, suspension changes, performance upgrades, etc.

However - this would be a good place to ask - what kinds of things are important to you? I know it seems like an odd question, but I was hired because of my creativity. So tell me what YOU say is important in YOUR industry. Is the heavier stock a big thing to you, or would a higher quantity output be higher on your list? Imagine you are talking to the guy who can build anything you want - what would you ask for?

Dave

I think Xante has a great machine with the Illumina, but I think they need to get a volume supply chain in place so the cost to operate can be in the same league as Xerox and Canon. Right now it's a specialty machine in that it can do what the others cannot - very nice heavy stock.

But what I'd like to see xante do would be to take it to the next level and give small to medium printers a machine that we can print hundreds of thousands of prints with at a price competitive level with xerox/canon/konika.