First experience of printing a real life order on our flatbed inkjet printer. Big learning curve. Running out of cyan ink so have to order more by next day delivery. Marrutts have despatched already.
I have read many posts about digital printing that ask about the cost of ink per item. Some printers rely on the printer software to measure ink usage. It occurs to me that with the CISS ink system (continuous ink supply system) which has the ink tanks separate from the printer it would be quite easy to weigh the tanks before and after printing a job. Then if you assume 1ml of ink weighs 1 gram the same as water you can estimate the volume used. Or you can do the same with the bottles of ink when you top up the tanks to a marked level and find what weight of ink has been added to the tanks. I have never seen this idea of weighing the tanks posted anywhere else.
I might need to purchase some small accurate scales but it would repay the cost to be able to cost jobs accurately. We offer printing on 3 sizes of paper napkins, cocktail, lunch and dinner sizes. So if a customer wants a big image on the 40cm dinner napkins I need to factor in the ink cost. Also in future I will be removing dark backgrounds from photos because printing these is drinking ink!
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| Inkjet print on napkins, placecards |
I have read many posts about digital printing that ask about the cost of ink per item. Some printers rely on the printer software to measure ink usage. It occurs to me that with the CISS ink system (continuous ink supply system) which has the ink tanks separate from the printer it would be quite easy to weigh the tanks before and after printing a job. Then if you assume 1ml of ink weighs 1 gram the same as water you can estimate the volume used. Or you can do the same with the bottles of ink when you top up the tanks to a marked level and find what weight of ink has been added to the tanks. I have never seen this idea of weighing the tanks posted anywhere else.
I might need to purchase some small accurate scales but it would repay the cost to be able to cost jobs accurately. We offer printing on 3 sizes of paper napkins, cocktail, lunch and dinner sizes. So if a customer wants a big image on the 40cm dinner napkins I need to factor in the ink cost. Also in future I will be removing dark backgrounds from photos because printing these is drinking ink!
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