Leaflets, flyers, business card – what printer?

[Phill Fenton]

Try typing in leaflet printing machine?

[Mark Newman]

I did try that, just focuses on the print companies as the keywords leaflet and printing take priority

[Chris J Murray]

You will struggle to find a machine that will print 400gsm and if you do can you let me know please. The 2 machines I use are speced to run a max of 300gsm and that’s from the bypass tray and single sided only. I over drive them massively by running 350gsm through them but it plays havoc on the drums and transfer belts.

I own my machines outright and pay as and when I need and that works for me. One machine is a bizhub c453 and the other is a canon c7055. If you are wanting to run heavy stock often you had better get used to cleaning rollers as the paper dust makes the machines slip on the heavy stuff and it can drive you round the bend.

For leaflets I use 130gsm glossy stock and print from the trays but again you need to keep the rollers spotless as they can and do jam often due to the gloss.

I have a limit of 1k of a5 leaflets before I outsource due to the cost factor and to try and keep wear and tear down.

I onl6ndo basic finishing and have a manual guillotine for trimming and business card cutter and a manual folder these work for me but this year Christmas cards have made me want a better creaser.

Sorry for the ramble!

Cheers
Chris

[Mark Newman]

That’s very helpful chris, I appreciate the ramble!
Only reason I said 400gsm is that’s what the company offered.

They charge £39 a week plus vat, for the printer, software, guillotine, and I think a creasing machine too.

Sounded ok to me, but they also charge 8.5p for every sheet you print. No ink costs ever and free support etc but I think that could end up quite costly and be cheaper to outsource them

[Chris J Murray]

Sorry but that’s a complete rip off. The reason why you can get all that equipment for such a small amount of money per week is because they are nailing you to the wall on the click cost.

For example if I were to have contract on the bizhub with the company who supplied it they were quoting me 1p per black and 2p per colour page including all consumables.

I run a small (very) copy shop in Penrith and if my basic costs were 8.5p per page I may as well shut the doors. A basic photocopy costs less then 1p including the paper

The trick I have found when comparing costs is to forget the toner cost but look at the cost of the drums, devs and transfer belts etc. They are the items that potentially write the machine off if they all come in together (this is where a service contract comes in)

Finally stay away from eBay if you are looking to purchase a machine they are only being sold because they are reaching their end of life in terms of drums etc. You are better off finding a local company who sells them and buy a refurbed printer from them my canon I bought from eBay for 500quid and so far have spent at least 1k on it and there is still more to come, on the other hand my bizhub I paid 3.5k for and bar a few niggles at the start it has just ran and ran.

Cheers
Chris

[Chris J Murray]

Oh. Don’t buy everything at once either. I only ever bought the guillotine because I had a few people wanting full bleed leaflets before that I always told them they were "budget" leaflets and there fore came with a white border – If they wanted full bleed then the min order run was 1k and I would just out source them. 99% of customers were happy with that.

The card creaser I bought because I had to print some menus on plastic paper and it was the only way I could fold them neatly. I lost on that job due to the upfront cost of the folder bit it has paid for its self many times since then.

Cheers
Chris

[David Hammond]

We have a small format digital set up.

Creasing Machine, Perforator, Laninator, booklet Maker, guilotine & two digital machines, 1 xerox with high cap feeder & finisher, and the duplo for high speed b&w prints.

Unless your customers want it same day, or you already have work you could feed the machine and make it pay, I wouldn’t bother.

We had 5000 1/3 A4 leaflets to print last week, it was quicker & cheaper to send it to a trade printer who delivered it to us next day before the paper merchant would have delivered the paper to us.

It isn’t just the cost per click, and paper, the finishing of some items can consume a lot of your time. Then theres the registration issues you get with lower end digital machines, you will get skew and movement of about 1mm between both sides, so the artwork beeds bleed, and dead space to alow for this.

If you’re going to offer full bleed leaflets you will need a machine that can feed SRA3 paper. Some contracts charge more for SRA3 prints. Our xerox machine has a maximum stock of 300gsm uncoated… we have on occasion put other bits through it.

We can produce some jobs we outsourced in house chaper on our digital. But run of the mill stuff luke business cards, letterheads, leaflets, its not worth firing it up. It’s really freaking annoying when you have all the gear, but it makes more sense to send a job to other ends of the country to have it delivered for notably cheaper than you can do it yourself.

There’s also the paper… some suppliers (Antalis) have minimum spends, or extortionate delivery, you will have stocks of paper on your shelves. Someone will always want it on something different, or you’ll only need 250 sheets, but end up ordering more just for delivery. Our merchant is great and offers us free deliver no MOQ.

[David Hammond]

Duplicate post – rubbish signal!

[Mark Newman]

Hi guys thank you for those insights.
I went back to the company, xpress on demand, and they’ve said I can buy my own inks etc and not pay per click instead if I wish.

The only reason I’m looking at it is because I’m getting calls and customers in the door almost daily wanting same day printing (they all leave it to the very last minute!)
Currently I’m having to turn them away as I can only get next day from certain suppliers at a premium so it’s too expensive for me to even make much myself on it.

I thought having my own kit would be useful.
I could do without the guillotine, and I have a paper folding machine already that does half, c, and z folds. So I’d just need a decent printer and the rip software I think.

Maybe worth looking at getting my own kit though

[David Hammond]

You’d need a guillotine, unless you’re going to run your prints on pre-cut sheets, with no bleed etc.

If they want it same day, even with your own machine, it’s still a premium service, just look at what the likes of Staples charge for ‘same day’, they want a fiver just to open a file from a USB.

[Mark Newman]

I would still charge a premium, it’s just currently most of the money made goes to my supplier if they go ahead, I would rather most went to me. Perhaps I can find my own guillotine to buy and printer then I wouldn’t need to look at the weekly option from xpres

[Steff Davison]

If you want more of the money to go to you, then you’ll need to allocate some money to buy the right "money making" kit on the right deal, freedom tends to cost money.

Good luck.

[David Hammond]

Be under no illusion how much time it takes. Printing 500 business cards, is about 35 sheets of card… if they’re laminated there’s waiting for that warm up, then feed each sheet in one by one (unless you spend even more cash on an automated machine), then trim each sheet from the laminate, finally you get to trim the cards, and package for collection/delivery.

A guillotine should be serviced 6monthly (h&s), spare blades, sharpening. You can get machine out of contract, but weight up how much parts are, like a transfer belt, colour drums, fusers, we’ve had rollers and circuit boards replaced so works out better for us to be on a contract.

Although in my experience there are much more profitable area’s of the business, that don’t involve half the stress and work.

[Warren Beard]

You’re talking about another whole business entirely and therefore should treat it like a business. Make an investment in to the right kit to supply the service and then sell it, if you can’t do either of those then don’t do it at all. I’ve been in both positions and offered it as a service and outsourced everything, after about 3 months I stopped as was not worth the hassle and stress with not being able to offer a product and service I wanted to offer. A year or two later invested £60k to have a competitive set up and was breaking even within the year, 5 years on as even though it’s a sideline business to our signage business it’s still a business and we treat it that way and is now nicely profitable.

Go with a service contract, try XCS who are good. It takes all the worry away from a machine that not only is very important to have running and running well but as David mentioned it can get very expensive if not on a contract.

Good luck

Warren

[David Lyons]

quote Mark Newman:

Hi, just wondering how many of you offer this service? I have since day one and it’s not been a huge earner as I have had to outsource it all.
However it does keep customers coming back for more so I see it as a pain, but worthwhile.

Since moving to my new workshop we’ve had a lot more interest in flyers and leaflets than ever before so I’m thinking of buying my own kit to increase sales and speed.

I’ve seen a company offering a small kit by lease but they charge per sheet you print on top – they supply the inks. That kind of means your tied in to them for ink, at their prices which we know won’t be the best.

Can anyone help with a printer model that is capable of printing up to 400gsm in A3

Also any help on finding folding, creasing, and guillotining machines would be much appreciated.
I have tried google, but if you type in “leaflet printer” you get a load of print companies, and not the actual printers!

Thank you in advance

Hi mark i do a lot of this. You are very welcome to phone me for a chat regards david

[Denise Goodfellow]

We just farm everything out to a couple of well know trade printers.

We don’t even try to compete with vista print or eBay. It’s sold as a service to help the customer leave it all in the hands of one supplier.

Charging for design is the key as business cards and the like are such a low cost item.