# Cost of Maintaining a Large Format Printer



## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

I am interested in going with a Large Format printer for the primarily the Workflow with ink costs being the second consideration.

I live in a Rural Location and I'm trying to figure out what to expect maintenance wise with large format printers.

Tell me what your experiences have been.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

SunState said:


> I am interested in going with a Large Format printer for the primarily the Workflow with ink costs being the second consideration.
> 
> I live in a Rural Location and I'm trying to figure out what to expect maintenance wise with large format printers.
> 
> Tell me what your experiences have been.


 One thing to consider with large format is that you will have to buy much larger volume qnty than you would have had to on the Ricoh. 

Question becomes are you actually using enough ink now so that the inks don't expire before you get to use them? So the issue is will your business volume justify the much larger volume ink purchase?

Otherwise what you save buying inks in larger volume you spend on throwing away expired inks. And since the large format printers are expensive I would not risk putting expired inks in my printer.

My 4880 has 330 mL carts, so I buy inks for that printer in half liters, but I am also able to use the inks up well before expiration.

The SG patent is up so I would expect competitive priced inks for your Ricoh soon if you want to save money. 

Large format is nice because you can use roll paper and "gang" a lot of transfers and print one long job if you like, so there are workflow benefits. Not to mention RIP benefits as well.


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## charles95405 (Feb 1, 2007)

you should take Mikes advice to heart..especially regarding using expired inks. I think...repeat think... skdave is probably the most experienced in sublimation production and I would think Mike is right behind him, especially in using third party inks. The cost of a large format printer dictates caution in using expired inks


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## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

Ink use is not an issue as I have plenty of orders pending if I go the volume route via wholesale (I have been a wholesaler for 30 years and have customers waiting for my dye sub products). Currently I am only doing retail with my dye sub product so my volume is low.

Of course saving on ink would be nice but I can make money with the ink costs the way they are now if I was doing wholesale, but the labor is the killer using desktop printers. Not being able to gang a bunch of files together has me sitting at the printer for hours at a time and it only will get worse with increased volume.

The real unknown for me is what to expect maintenance wise with the large format printers. I need to factor that into my costs. Not just the price of what an $8000 or a $10,000 printer adds to my costs, but what about maintain it? I have to add that to the overall costs as well.

All I can get out of the sales people is that once it goes out of warranty you pay for repairs out of pocket for a repair person to come in or buy a new printer.

Do many of you learn to repair them yourselves?

How often do you have down time?

Do you have a backup printer so you don't keep customers waiting?

If I have orders in the range of 500 to 1000 sq ft a month of printing, I can't get backed up if a printer goes down.


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## cprvh (Jan 23, 2006)

It sounds like you need to improve your workflow, not the printer volume. If you are only printing a thousand sqft per month, then I think the wide format machines would not be of much benefit (unless obviously you need the wide transfers). 

I am guessing two smaller machines would serve you much better...print something from each machine every day. If one goes down, you can still print from the other until you get both back on line. Don't wait until the second one goes down before getting it repaired...then you're dead in the water.

If you are getting your art files supplied in a print ready format, then a RIP would certainly make printing the transfers easier. It's basically a drag and drop procedure...drag the files into the RIP and hit print. If you are creating your art files one by one, then the RIP may not be of as much interest except for layout and extended color calibration options.


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## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

Workflow as in RIP

1000 sq feet was just one purchase order that was a value of 16 thousand dollars.

Everyone keeps telling me how to run my business they have no concept about and that I shouldn't have to explain, but no one will offer insight on what their maintenance costs look like.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

SunState said:


> Workflow as in RIP
> 
> 1000 sq feet was just one purchase order that was a value of 16 thousand dollars.
> 
> Everyone keeps telling me how to run my business they have no concept about and that I shouldn't have to explain, but no one will offer insight on what their maintenance costs look like.


I can't speak to printers like the Mutohs or Rolands, I would presume they would be similar to large format Epsons, but I'll only speak to the Epson maintenance.

If you are talking about just routine maintenance and not repair then costs are not high. The maintenance really is just cleaning/flushing the capping station, wiper arm, splash box, and under the print head, general cleaning etc. 

You also have the waste ink collector to replace or maintain. I just use paper towels in mine and reset the unit with a chip re-setter, otherwise these are about $50. You have small costs either for cleaning fluid or "simple green" and distilled water. There is a cutting knife that needs replaced but those are not expensive. Figure syringes, chip re-setter, carts can go bad. You can determine those costs upfront depending on what model you choose.

If you print with a large format printer there really isn't much different maintenance than small format, you just have to do it more often depending on how much ink you use. More printing more cleaning etc. 

If you are using Ricoh and don't have too many "miles" on it then maybe you haven't had to do any capping station maintenance or waste collector replacement yet, but you really have to learn to DIY these kind of maintenance things. But it's not hard to learn, there are lot's of videos for this and of course if you buy large format you should have dealer/manufacturer tech support for the routine maintenance items. 

Things like hard failures like print heads or circuit boards, you are looking at a lot of money to have a qualified tech come to your place and replace these things, just depends on what is wrong and what model you have. 

No one can really tell what those hard failure costs would be. If you wanted fixed (and known) costs for these you would have to have some kind of a maintenance agreement with your printer dealer, for those that offer that.

Most (self included) only buy the printer size based on what size you are going to be printing and transfering.

You had mentioned you don't want to sit and wait on the print job finishing then send another job to the printer ... of course a RIP can do that but I send batch jobs to my small format printer all the time. I have an action in Photoshop. Most my stuff is in vector but I just export out in tiff from my vector program into a common folder then I run the action in PS and go have my dinner or do other things while all those different files print.

If you have Power Driver then you have even more options to "batch print" variable files. It's a virtual printer and does the color management all built in so unlike me you wouldn't need to use a program for your printing like Photoshop that can manage printer color. 

You just need a batch print utility like QImage or one of many PDF batch printers out there. These can be low cost or even free. Ifranview handles practically every graphic format file out there, it's free and you can run batch jobs from the command line.

Having a RIP ($1500 +) and a large format printer $$$ sounds like a very very expensive way just to have batch printing. But as you said ... it's your business and of course your money.


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## lrsbranding (Aug 6, 2011)

We have a 54" Roland and the routine maintenance costs are next to nothing. Some swabs and solvent to clean around the heads ,capping stations and wipers. Depending on how much you use it you will need to replace the wipers and pad and they cost about as much as a good hamburger. The wasted ink dumps into a container you just empty when full. Not a waste ink collector like our Ricoh that needs replaced. The next thing that would cost is replacing the capping stations about $50.00 ea. But that might be once a year.


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## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

I used the wrong word, but I thought talking about living rural and cost of the the repair guy would have been the clue I was talking about typical expense with break downs. 

Mike, currently I print vector images out of AI but I can convert the files to tiff and print to PS so I will look into your suggestions. 

There are 3 reasons I still need large format if I want to wholesale so my question still stands.


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## martinwoods (Jul 20, 2006)

lrsbranding said:


> We have a 54" Roland and the routine maintenance costs are next to nothing. Some swabs and solvent to clean around the heads ,capping stations and wipers. Depending on how much you use it you will need to replace the wipers and pad and they cost about as much as a good hamburger. The wasted ink dumps into a container you just empty when full. Not a waste ink collector like our Ricoh that needs replaced. The next thing that would cost is replacing the capping stations about $50.00 ea. But that might be once a year.


Rich, I have an sp540, is that something that can be turned into a sublimation setup or are you talking a different 54" roland? Thanks. Of course I know it would most likely need new head, lines etc if changing inks.


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## mgparrish (Jul 9, 2005)

SunState said:


> I used the wrong word, but I thought talking about living rural and cost of the the repair guy would have been the clue I was talking about typical expense with break downs.
> 
> Mike, currently I print vector images out of AI but I can convert the files to tiff and print to PS so I will look into your suggestions.
> 
> There are 3 reasons I still need large format if I want to wholesale so my question still stands.


 This would be helpful then until you get your LF and RIP.

https://forums.adobe.com/message/3380323

This is real simple, you just record keystrokes to make the action, then you either do the batch command or use the batch command in Adobe Bridge. It's all built in PS. 

Make sure you use the "Print one copy" option and not the regular print command in the action, otherwise it pauses the macro getting the print preview.

I added "close file" at the end of the action.

AI has the same mechanisms for actions and batch, but last I tried it there was only the print option which brings up the print preview and would pause the action till you click print.


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## keepitspinning (Jan 13, 2014)

I had a 4880 that died (heads). Bit the bull it and bought Epsons F6070. Will print up to 44" wide and at a fraction of the cost of the 4880. All over prints were uneconomical for us previously. We went through so much ink with cleaning cycles using the 4880 with Sawgrass inks. An all over print now has a cost of $6-9.00 for both sides total. Epson inks, an actual warranty, no brainer


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## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

Mike, I will give that a try and let you know how it goes.

keepitspinning, that is the model I keep looking at. I haven't seen many reviews on it yet, thanks for your post.


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## lrsbranding (Aug 6, 2011)

My Roland tech charges a $45.00 service call fee just to show up then bills out at $25.00 per 15 min on site. Then charges for parts. So I don't know what to say about typical expenses for break downs because it can vary greatly. I can say when he shows up it's going to be at least $300. Fortunately that is not very often. If you buy a quality printer you won't have too many problems. 
Chris, My printer is eco solvent but I have been told you can convert it but you would need to replace everything that the ink comes into contact with. I don't know why you would need to if you flushed all the eco solvent. If you go to CMYKParts you will see that the print heads for the sp540 and the Fp740 sublimation printer are the same.


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## keepitspinning (Jan 13, 2014)

I think the promo ended, but when I bough, Epson was giving extra ink and a half pallet of 44" paper. We fought daily with the 4880. this printer has been a dream. It is fast and is a low cost to operate. 
If you want to email me, I'll give you the contact info from where I purchased it. For a small fee, they sent a tech out to set it up, go through operation, software install, etc.
Have only experienced one small issue which was a software setting that I've figured out. It was buried in the rip software.
I don't know what the operating cost of some of the other machines are, but I know the 4880 was brutally costly.
Since ink clogging the heads is a major concern, I felt it made sense to do an Epson printer with Epson inks. No finger pointing this way. I'm extremely happy with my decision six weeks in. We've started doing all over prints and it appears it is going to be a $$$$ maker


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## skateinvaders (Jun 24, 2013)

I have two Epson F6070 one is for Backup Reasons, as we print quantity every day and the maintenance is very low. 
Waste Ink Boxes have to be replaced from time to time and your daily Cleaning cycles done. That s pretty much it..
I got my printers with Rip Software and 2. Year warranty. (Yeahh)
In my opinion from all the large format Printers who are available on the market up to date, the new Epsons are the best, my second choice was Mutoh but went for Epson. 
The only issue as with many other Printers is room Temperature and humidity you have to really keep in control to avoid bigger Problems


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## skdave (Apr 11, 2008)

Printing Heads for Mutoh cost $1200-$1500. labor to replace $400.
Dampers $6.00
Mother boards $2000.
Pumps $500.00
We have local repair guys in St. Louis so you need to add travel time CAR or Air. 
I run 4 Mutohs and one Roland 74" 6 colors
I have a 9800 Epson sitting with a bad head $2000 repair to get up and running.


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## HeadhunterX (Oct 23, 2007)

SK Dave, look in the classifieds for the cure to your 9800, I have just what you need with a great printhead...


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## ekozy39 (May 19, 2014)

1000 sqft in printing yielded you $16,000? Awesome!!


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## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

I guess I worded my initial question wrong. I guess what I was trying to ask is this:

How much doe REPAIR cost per year on average over the lifetime of a printer. Ho often does a print head go? How often does a mother board go out?

If you buy an $8,000 printer, do you figure on replacing it every 10 years or every 5 years? How much repair costs do you figure on top of the cost of the printer?

People always talk about ink costs but the cost of the wide format printer, maintenance & repair not. 





ekozy39 said:


> 1000 sqft in printing yielded you $16,000? Awesome!!


I have a lot of labor involved after the printing so it's not a high of margins for me.


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## skdave (Apr 11, 2008)

Build $2000.per year into your books for maintenance reserve. And you'll be safe. May break ,1 day after warranty runs out, may never break.


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## SunState (Mar 5, 2014)

Thanks Dave. That was the type of number I was looking for.


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## inkjetparts (Apr 2, 2016)

Your Maintenance cost for large format printers depends on hours of operation on these printers.

On a 8-hour per day shift (40 hrs per week) regular parts, such as wipers; cap top; dampers; or even pump only need to be replaced once a year. Your monthly maintnance cost would only be cleaning swabs, rail grease, and once in a long while you will use the swabs soaked with alcohol to clean the encoder. Your dx5 or dx7 print head should be able to last at least one year. I do want to mention that the dx5 print heads these days dont last as long as they did in the past.

If the printer runs for 12 hrs or more per day, you would definitely need to replace the above maintenance parts every 6 month, Especially the wiper blades. Since a 10 piece pack only cost $70 some bucks, you should replace them every 2-3 month. It will make each cleaning more effective and cause less smear on the print head. 

Personal Note: lots of people spent more money on wiper blade that comes with the holder. its absolutely not necessary. You will save money,buying only the blades and insert them into the Same holder. It becomes new again. 

If you run a decent dye sub ink, your print head will last 8-12 month. You should clean your head carriage rail on a weekly basis. 

I have seen large print house saved $5000 or even more per printer, when they regularly and consistently followed maintenance schedule.


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## skdave (Apr 11, 2008)

This is a 2 year old thread and I just replaced a head in one of my Mutoh 900 $1500.00


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## bpfohler (Jun 7, 2009)

skdave said:


> This is a 2 year old thread and I just replaced a head in one of my Mutoh 900 $1500.00


I for one am glad you did. When we need sublimation in any volume we look to SK. 
I never have been able to figure out how your ink deposit on you prints look so sparse and they print beautiful and vibrant.

Ink deposit control is limited with small format printers like we use.


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