printing business cards

[Alistair Richards]

Hi Clive,

I dabble in a bit of business card printing and letterheads etc. I bought a Lexmark C522n which is a colour laser and I’m very pleased with it. I have been using 280gsm silk coated for cards and most of the time it feeds ok. Also, printerland.co.uk are doing a very good offer on it now, you can get one for £312 + VAT and then claim £150 cash back.

Just out of curiosity, how do you trim your cards, have you got a proper guillotine, or are you just trimming by hand like me, any good techniques?

Ali

[Clive Martinez]

Hi Ali,
Thanks for your reply.
I have a die cutter which I bought many years ago. The downside is that I can only cut two cards at a time. Having said this, the finished product is fantastic.
This company make dies in any shape or size. I had mine custom made.

This is their website
http://www.neilenterprises.com/pages/ppages/9924.html

Clive

[Rob Brearley]

word of advice clive stay away from epson the service and back up are absolute poo, we have a print shop and for short run colour farm it out to guy locally who has a zerox and believe me if you can afford the investment the results are outstanding and also accept 350gsm with ease, failing that the oki printers are quite good also, as far as cutting goes if you just want cheap and small have a look on ebay for the small ideal guillotene we have one as a spair and they go forever expect to pay about 400 for a good second hand one, well worth it for small jobs, over the years i learnt the hard way when it comes to machines but zerox definately have the edge, but if you dont want the click charges and service charges that come with it i think oki have the edge, just stay away from epson in 2 years ours has worked for 19 days in total and we are in the middle of a legal wrangle with epson they honestly do not care at all….rant over now 😛

[lubo1972]

Xerox DC-12, it is workhorse. But I think that they discontinued it. Now they have DC240/250 it prints mat /because there isn’t a fuser oil/ but it is expensive. Also Konica-Minolta Bizhubs are good for their price. I read that OKI consumables is very expensive otherwise they are good machines and can print 1 meter long.

[Ken Christensen]

although we don’t use our colour printer for bus cards i would like to continue this forum on colour printers as i have just had big arguments regarding a lexmark c510 we have had for 1 1/2 year which has paper feeding problems and as it is no longer made cannot be repaired…..
luckily, we bough a 3 -year extended warranty so were offered a cheaper samsung in replacement – or a refund so we can buy what we like.

the lexmark worked and printed well so i am thinking of getting another to ‘rescue’ my stock of refills, wi-fi installation, etc.

any feedback on colour printers would be much appreciated.

ken

[lubo1972]

First of all you must answer the qustion "What I want to do with this printer?". Business cards, leaflets, postcards, etc..
Now you can find color lasers from 300£ to 300000£, so there is too much choices.
If you make a lot of prints – get "FSMA" contract – Xerox and Minolta has that type of contracts in UK, if you are interested I can send you contact information.
If you make small amount of prints – get one of the mid range printers – HP have some.
I don’t know color Lexmarks well because here most popular brands are Xerox, Minolta and Canon.