[nucFlash]

I did a search through google and was bombarded by results.

Basically, our needs are simple. Up to about a month ago we were using an Epson Stylus Color 3000 to print large, black and white covers for our local high school. We are the local newspaper print roughly 5500 of these covers (which consist of a gold 11 x 17 sheet that is around the thickness of a post card and is printed on both sides). The Stylus color has worked very well for us as it's separate and large black ink cartridges go far and are relatively cheap.

Unfortunately, after five years of loyal service, it is showing its age terribly. While it still prints, it will not fully eject the printed sheets so someone has to sit with the printer and physically pull them out as they are completed. On top of this, it partially pulls in a second sheet when it pulls in a sheet to print, so this same person has to straighten the paper each time it pulls a sheet in.

We have tried several wide format (11 x 17) ink jet printers and they all work except for the fact that they all have very small ink cartridges compared with the Epson Stylus 3000 and they would require us to spend far more in ink than we will make from the covers themselves. I have also been informed by several printing professionals that none of the printers we have tried (a Canon i9900 and the one we are currently using, an Epson Stylus Color 2200) are designed for our type of volume printing and will not last as long as the 3000 has. This last fact I cannot personally attest too, but it does makes sense.

Today I was studying the situation and had a brain storm. I began looking into the existence of a wide format laser printer, capable of printing to the somewhat thick, 11 x 17 gold paper we use. That is when I tried google, and where I started my story.

So, getting back to my original question. Does anyone here know of a laser printer that is capable of printing to 11 x 17 inch paper AND that is designed for volume printing (meaning one that is rather heavy duty)? Any possible information is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[anoetic]

I think your two best bets are HP (Model 5100) and GCC (gccprinters.com).

GCC was the company that made laser printers for Apple. The GCC is supposed to have very good grayscale and dithering. Both models are for volume printing, have postscript and you should be able to find parts and toner for both rather easily.

You may need to play around with your setting to get similiar results and I'm not sure if you'll get the same quality as you got with the 3000.

[quietjim]

We bought a Xerox Phawser 7300 color laser in June and love it. It does 11x17, has excellent color. In fact we use it for proofing for four color magazine printing as well as the usual sort of inhouse stuff (newsletters, brochures, etc.). We bought it with the duplexing module and I think it was about $4000. Supposedly the toner life is 15K copies; I haven't had to change the toner yet so I can't say how accurate that is; the cartridges cost about $200 apiece and you need four so that's a consideration.

Did I mention this thing is FAST?? Very fast. It will make you hate other printers. I'm use to printing a multipage document to our old hp laser printer, going and getting some coffee, and then waiting for the last few pages of a 10 page document to finish. With the xerox, it's done before I'm out of the chair ... one exception: it needs to warm up for about two minutes if it hasn't been used for a while.

[FauxCaster]

If there is ever more than two zeros in a color print run. Do not think about ink jet! LaserJet or a print shop.

You should get donated outsourced printing in trade for an ad. You are a student organization, and that's the soft-spot when it comes to local companies.

[tooki]

Originally posted by anoetic:
I think your two best bets are HP (Model 5100) and GCC (gccprinters.com).

GCC was the company that made laser printers for Apple.

Nonsense. Canon and Fuji/Xerox made most of the laser print engines that every laser printer manufacturer used during the period when Apple made printers. To this day, most of them are Canon.

Anyway, 5500 copies per run is a huge amount, for an inkjet or regular office laser, you'd probably be far cheaper getting those offset-printed.

Consider also that Stylus Color 3000's are still available.

tooki

[scaught]

Originally posted by tooki:
Nonsense. Canon and Fuji/Xerox made most of the laser print engines that every laser printer manufacturer used during the period when Apple made printers. To this day, most of them are Canon.

Anyway, 5500 copies per run is a huge amount, for an inkjet or regular office laser, you'd probably be far cheaper getting those offset-printed.

Consider also that Stylus Color 3000's are still available.

tooki

5500, double sided, and you have your own stock should = relatively cheap. if its just black and white and will run through a DocuTech, you should be able to get them done for cheap. unless you like wrestling a desktop printer for a week.

[nucFlash]

First may I say thank you for the quick responses.

To give my reply a little background (), we are actually a newspaper corporation which controls three smaller newspapers. Our main office is in our largest holding. The other two papers reside in different counties (they are all three small town papers).

We print football programs for the teams in two of our towns. The inside cover for both programs stays the same throughout the football season (this is where the calendars and advertising are located), only the outside, front and back covers change. The back cover is where we list the roster (I know little of football, so pardon me if my lingo is incorrect () of the home team and the roster of the opposing team. The front cover is covered by a graphic which does not change, aside from the date at the bottom.

One thing we have been thinking of is having one side of the sheets printed professionally (We fold them in the middle to make a binder, so one side contains the front and back cover and the other the two inside jackets), the side which does not change. And then printing the outside covers ourselves as the games come along. The deciding factor will really be the cost per sheet.

[tonton]

Double post...

[anoetic]

Originally posted by tooki:
Nonsense. Canon and Fuji/Xerox made most of the laser print engines that every laser printer manufacturer used during the period when Apple made printers. To this day, most of them are Canon.

Anyway, 5500 copies per run is a huge amount, for an inkjet or regular office laser, you'd probably be far cheaper getting those offset-printed.

Consider also that Stylus Color 3000's are still available.

tooki

Actually Tooki they were. It's possible the components were derived from other manufactures as well but the printers themselves were designed by Apple and GCC. The Apple large format printer was also a GCC.

From the GCC website:

In 1984, anticipating dramatic changes in the electronics market, GCC began designing products for the newly-introduced Apple Macintosh� computer. GCC's most critical success was the HyperDrive, the first internal hard disk drive for the Macintosh.

From there GCC went on to develop the Personal Laser Printer (PLP), the Macintosh's first QuickDraw laser printer, followed by the WriteMove portable printer, the WideWriter large-format ink-jet printer as well as the ColorFast desktop digital film recorder. With these and a host of other output devices, GCC Printers established themselves as the leader in desktop solutions for price and performance in the laser printer industry.

[tooki]

Your GCC quote just proved what I said: they did not make Apple's printers. None of those printers were Apple products. And they specify: "the Macintosh's first QuickDraw laser printer". Key word: QuickDraw. The original LaserWriter was PostScript, not QuickDraw.

Apple never sold a large-format inkjet. I believe the ancient Apple Color Printer (which was made by Canon) supported 11x17", but all of the StyleWriter series was letter/A4 size only.

GCC made accessories for Apple computers. They did not make products for Apple Computer.

tooki

[anoetic]

The large format printer I was speaking of was the LaserWriter 8500, a large format laser printer. This printer was in fact the same as the GCC elite 20/600. The best examples I can give you that they were one and the same is the fact that toner cartridges for both printers are identical, they used the same processor and aside from postscript 3 on the Apple the specs are very similiar.

The two Apple laser printers I'm quite sure were GCC were:

GCC Elite 1212,12/600 --> Apple LaserWriter 12/640

GCC Elite 20/600,20/800,20/1200 --> Apple LaserWriter 8500

I'm not saying all Apple laser printers were made by GCC, sorry for that confusion. I was mostly speaking to the wide format variety this thread was about, poor clarification on my part.

[tooki]

ALL laser printers, be they from Apple or somewhere else, share their cartridge and print engine with some other laser printer!!! That's because a few companies make the print engines, and other companies buy them, put them in cases, may or may not add a custom motherboard to it, definitely write their own software for it, and then sell them in a variety of configurations.

You realize that the insides of those GCC's aren't made by GCC, either? The 12/640, for example, uses the same Canon print engine as many HP LaserJets of the time did.

Every LaserWriter model (yes, every laser printer of every make, in fact) ever made has had several alter egos, because at any given time, only a few models of print engines exist.

No offense, anoetic, but you haven't got the foggiest notion what you're talking about.

tooki

[anoetic]

Tooki

I understand a print engine is made by a different comapny. Just as Apple uses an IBM chip we don't call it an IBM computer and just because it has a powerpc processor does not make something an Apple. However, The LaserWriter 8500 and the GCC Elite shared the same print engine -- Fuji-Xerox (P880) not Canon, had the same processor -- AMD 29040 processor, use the same toner cartridges, have nearly identical housing, nearly the exact same inner workings and you can use the same drivers for them.

I know not any single one of these things is unique in the world of printers but at what point do they become the same printer. Aside from the different printer languages supported their specs are identical. It could be possible that GCC or Apple copied one or the others design for the laser printer and I'll grant the fact that I don't have direct proof that GCC designed or made the printers for Apple. But you can look at the specs and say that for all intents and purposes they are nearly identical hardware. I respect your opinion regarding the topic but what is the cutoff point for saying it's the same.

[tooki]

But the same could be said for basically ANY laser printer and its various sister models. All printers based on a given print engine tend to look and act similar -- because they use the same print engine!

As for print drivers: they're both PostScript, so they can both work with any PostScript driver. This is a non-argument.

As for the shape: dictated by the print engine.

As for the interior workings: those ARE the print engine, so of course it's going to be the same.

As for the toner cartridge: cartridges match with an engine, really, not the printer model. Every printer of a given engine uses identical cartridges.

As for them being nearly identical hardware: DUH! THEY USE THE SAME PRINT ENGINE! OF COURSE THEY'RE ALMOST IDENTICAL!

What differentiates them?
-external design
-technical support, documentation
-above all, rasterizer design

The rasterizer, regardless of what CPU it runs on, is the device that takes the raw image data (in this case, PostScript) and converts it, ultimately, to the electrical impulses that drive the print engine. THIS is where companies can really set their product apart. It's widely documented that Apple really knew how to design their printers such as to get the most out of the print engine. (Given, say, 4 printers using the same engine, Apple's always had the best printouts, followed by HP.)

So, where's the cutoff point? Is the hardware and software absolutely, positively identical? If so, then it's the same thing. If there's any difference, then it's not the same thing. Besides, you didn't say that Apple and GCC printers are the same. You said GCC made printers for Apple, and that is plain and simply not true.

You'd be a lot closer to accurate if you said that Canon and Fuji-Xerox made printers for Apple and GCC and HP and pretty much everyone else.

tooki

[tonton]

Jeez... you really should use offset printing for that many copies.

In Hong Kong, we just printed 5000 four color double-sided A3 pages folded into A4 8-page brochures, with delivery, for a grand total of about US$500, and that was on nice 157gsm paper, sheet-fed. If you supply your own paper, the cost for printing alone should be about half that. And the cost for established customers, especially those with a regular printing schedule, will be much less.

Of course, I know offset printing in the US will be more, but it still can't be as much as you'd spend printing it yourself, and the finished product would be MUCH nicer.

Your suggestion to print the covers without the back cover first is probably the best one. Then you could print a higher volume. The "roster" or whatever is on the back cover could be printed in black overprint, and it would still look nice, even if you did that part on a black laser printer.

By the way, I was in the offset printing industry for about four years.