General m2 ink costs- Solvent and latex

[David McDonald]

Hi Martyn

Never had a Mutoh but that seems pretty steep.

HP Latex inks on our 560 average around £1.80 + VAT per square across the range of what we are printing.

Cheers
Dave

[Chris Wilson]

Prefer to work it out by CC of which we are £0.16 approx. Running eco sol max 3 (Roland) I believe running non genuine is around £0.09 per CC, just not worth the risk of such a small offset for me.

Really depends on what we are printing but I would say on average we are between 15-30cc a liner meter. Things like stickers and garment prints are much less.

Suppose the ideal is to try get as much white in a design as you can.

[David McDonald]

The £1.80 was per square metre. Working that back to the cost of a cartridge then we are averaging circa 14 cc per square metre so a cc works out at £0.129 each – so not too dissimilar to what Chris has said.

Cheers

[Martyn Heath]

Ok, i do always use wave effect, which could affect it slighly. So either im paying way too much for my cartridges or the onyx calculation is out.

[Robert Lambie]

For general printing, INK estimate is £2 per square metre, £3 a linear metre regardless.

only if i have single colour with scarce ink coverage on high volume do i even consider lowering my "guesstimate"

My opinion is if you have to narrow your costs down to pennies, your not charging enough.
Take your guess and round it up and charge by the linear metre, same with your print media, laminate etc.

it is all very well calculating things down to the inch, but you forget about the waste incurred.
E.G.
Are you printing full width of the roll? if you’re not, you have losses incurred in on your print vinyl.
Are you Laminating it? If so, your wasting the same amount on laminate!
Also, if your laminating, have you included the lead-in and out of both print media and laminate. most likely not, but you have about a foot either side of both materials.
what about miss prints, print tests etc…
all can be minimal, granted. but on a busy day, busy week… this adds up and thats only what "You know about"
Does your staff tell you about every mistake? :shake:

All i am saying here is, do not think you have your production costs down to a fine art that you cant round up your costs to the nearest pound to cover for hidden extras…
just my opinion…

on a side note, we have used solvent, uv and latex inks over the past 15 years and i am always amazed by the amount of ink dumped/accumulated in cycle cleans. Even the old thermal print machines wasted loads of unprinted ribbon.

Now i must dash, one of our guys have just had a head strike and wiped our 3 print heads. 😉 😆

[Martyn Heath]

Great points there robert. All things have been taken into account when pricing. I know im above average for my m2 price, mainly because of the low volume i put out. Its easy for us guys to lower the prices on print but at the end of the day they are an expensive, sometimes troublesome piece of kit that has a lot of waste.

Hopefully your head strikes are not too costly, otherwise i can see another head strike coming on 😆

[Neil Danley]

quote Martyn Heath:

Hi all. Curious if you guys have worked out your ink costs per m2. i know i depends a lot on the % of coverage. For argument sake lets talk about full coverage OEM and third party inks, normal printing settings, vinyl printing.

Talking solvent btw, but also interested in hearing your latex stories.

I worked mine out with mutoh inks and came in @ 8 euros pm2, 6.50 quid which i thought was pretty high.

Hi Martyn

Wow that seems high?! I was told to do: Cost/contents = Cost per ml and then multiply by 8ml which is the coverage of an average A0/m2. My previous Mutoh was about £1.60/£1.75 per m2. I think you may have done your calculations a little wrong or paying far too much for ink! 440ml was about £85-90 from memory.

I think most eco or Latex’s are in this region really so unless you are cleaning loads I can’t see how yours would be 4 times as high?

Neil D.

[Martyn Heath]

yes it does seem high. My calculations are correct but that is incl vat, and yes im getting paying more for cartridges, 110.00 plus vat.

[Philip Gibbs]

8 euros/m2 seams much to high.
I think we have the same machine as you but use wasatch rip.
I use inktec inks at 79 euros/L and get about 90 cents/m2 printing 720dpi x 720dpi 8 passes and "fine and wave 1" wave setting

[Colin Crabb]

quote :

110.00 plus vat.

for which machine?

[Jonathan Dray]

We use £2 per square metre for pricing calculations. In reality it’s less than that (somewhere between £1.50 and £1.75) but as Rob says that takes into account wastage, print heads, unforeseen costs etc.

[Martyn Heath]

Its a mutoh vj 1614 using eco RJ80U inks. Yes philip i also use graphics 2, 8 pass, wave 1 settings.

Im starting to think onyx is just getting it wrong.

[Pane Talev]

Nice thread. Always wondered the same. Thanks for all useful info.