Short Run Printer for Small Company

[stephiej]

I work for a rapidly expanding small company and our printing needs are fast outstripping our printing capacity. We are a boutique agency and want to provide service that is above the expected so colour printing is important to us.

We currently print an average of around 500 sheets per month with between 10-40% coverage. We are currently using an inkjet from which the quality is ordinary, the printing cost is exorbitant and the speed is abysmal.

Ideally we would like a colour laser that will give us economical print jobs, have A3 (11 x 17) capacity and, if possible borderless printing (or minimal borders if this is not possible).

I know very little about how to compare colour laser printers so any assistance you could offer would be much appreciated.

Cheers, Steph

 

[Jeff]

I do not believe you will find a borderless laser printer It's probably more espensive to try and clean the transfer rollers so the next sheet doesn't get contaminated than to trim off the bleeds and recycle the trimmed paper. It would seem like a time saver even if slightly more expensive, but I haven't seen it to date.

Consider getting a machine that can print 12 x 18 and an electric guillitine trimmer if you can budget a few thousand dollars extra to do full bleed for a nice look.

Many laser printers have drivers that limit output to 1/4" margins, though if you select carefully you can get 1/8" margins, though machine maintenance becomes more critical as typically the lower-end machines have fairly slack paper drawers, feed mechanisms, and fusers that can be slightly out of adjustment which you normally won't notice, unless you have that 1/8" margin that is 1/32" off center or out of square. With a 1/4" or 1/2" margin you would have never noticed and most of the color lasers are really designed for office use and thus sacrifice tight tolerance for robust feeding (meaning the sheet goes through) without breaking the bank.

Only way I know of to compare is to ask for print samples and price per print information (which if from the manufacturer will be at 5% coverage, but at least it gives you something to extrapolate. Also don't forget the major durable costs of drums, transfer belt, and fuser.) Everyone looks for different things in a print and we're not to the point that laser prints are perfect from sub $100,000 machines. But they're darn good. Get print samples and see if you like the finish quality, halftone smoothness, midtone and dark tone consistency, light tone gradiation smoothness, etc. as a start.

 

[stephiej]

Thanks Jeff, I've been researching further and have now given up on borderless printing. A question I still have outstanding is how much memory my printer should be expandable to. One of our recent proposals was around 90MB but this would be the largest document we would print. Some of our one-pagers can have 2MB logos embedded in them. Any wisdom to impart?