Is it better to reprint a hundred page document, or run it through a copier? Does one use less toner, or is it an almost equal trade-off…although the copier runs faster? - Jinx
It is almost always better to use the copier. Copier toner tends to be much less expensive than laser printer toner per page had hugely less expensive than an ink jet printer. The copier’s printing mechansim also tends to be faster and less complicated.
Copier toner is generally cheaper and one cartridge lasts a lot longer than one printer cartridge. However, I always figure in the man-hours involved in printing out, then having to go to the copier and watch it and then go through every page to make sure nothing got sucked into the feeder wrong. Depending on how long the doc is, I find it is overall easier to just print it twice. Maybe not with a hundred-pager but the aggravation isn’t worth it to me to save a few bucks on printer toner.
Laser printers and photocopiers work in broadly the same way… at least in as far as that they bake the same sort of toner onto a page - if the photocopier puts less toner on the page than the printer, then the print will appear fainter.
Whether it is more economical one way or the other is entirely dependent on the running costs of your particular machine; your company might own the printer, but rent the copier, paying a per-page cost or something, or they might happen to get fantastic deals on copier toner and not-so-good deals on printer consumables. There’s no hard-and-fast rule.
Except… if you print one original and copy it on the photocopier, the copies are likely to be not quite as good, because the copying process is imperfect, whereas if you print them all on the laser printer, they will all be of the same (hopefully high) quality.
Another perspective on this question: I am responsible for a few hundred network printers at a big law firm and if somebody decides that they want 4 copies of a 300 page document it is much better for them to print one and then make copies - the more pages sent to a printer the longer it is tied up and other people start to complain.
In addition, a good photocopier is faster than most printers. We just got a shipment of HP’s latest and greatest laserjets which max out at about 55ppm. When I worked in a copy shop ten years ago photocopiers were running that fast.
Laser Printer Toner Remanufacturer Guy here:
If you’re talking about a high-volume black and white copier that runs 30+ pages a minute, that’s probably your best bet.
If you’re talking about Canon’s line of PC (personal copier) series, your cost per page is about double that of a regualar Hewlett Packard or Canon laser printer.
Here’s a rundown of the common models:
A Canon E-40 toner cartridge, which works in the small PC-300, PC-400, PC-700 series copy machines yields anywhere between 2000 and 4000 pages depending on what you’re copying (copiers have a wider range of yield since people tend to set the exposure too high or too low). These sell new for an average of around US$130. That’s a cost of 4.3 cents a page (if you use average yield of 3000 pages).
Inkjet is slightly less expensive per page. A HP 51645A black inkjet cartridge (used in most of the older DeskJets) costs about $30.00 everywhere I’ve ever been (in the US). HP’s page rating is 833 at 5% coverage (the 5% is HP’s rating and may be a little low for normal printing). That’s 3.6 cents per page.
An HP LaserJet 1000/1200 high-yield toner cartridge sells for about $80 and yields 3500 pages at 5% coverage. This figures to 2.2 cents per page if you get the full 3500 pages out of the cartridge.
An HP LaserJet 4000 high-yield toner cartridge (C4127X) sells for $120 and gets 10,000 pages at 5% coverage. That’s 1.2 cents a page.
These examples use an all-in one cartridge, so there’s really no other consumable components for these machines.
The Sharp AR-250 copier (just pulled a high volume copier as an example) uses:
Toner, priced at about $80.00, yields 22,000 pages – .36 cents/page
Developer, priced at about $70.00, yields 80,000 pages – .08 cents/page
Drum, priced at about $150.00, yields 160k pages – .09 cents/page
Total cost per page is .53 cents a page (yes, the decimal is supposed to be there…that’s slightly above 1/2 cent per page)
If you’re buying compatible or remanufactured products, cut roughly 40% off those costs.
Your best bet’s the high-volume copier if one is available. If not, use a laser printer. Inkjet’s not too bad but it’s gonna take forever to print hundreds of copies.
Jason