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Thats one of the biggest cost is for outsourcing the copies.

Another is the cost to produce a drawing on a plotter compared to the cost on our system. John and I spoke the other day and we believe the savings is .45 - .65 cent savings per "D" size drawing.

Any others??

Art
Last edited {1}
Inkjet plotting. Outsourcing is perceived as saving on labor costs, but you have to consider turnaround time, travel time if they have to deliver copies for reproduction. I would also consider the scanning aspect. It would be less expensive in most cases to scan your own drawings to archive or FTP site than pay someone who will charge a premium. Scan charges in our area are between $4.00 and $6.00 per page. It all depends on the account.
Art,

Can you shed some light on how you came up with the savings per page vs. a plotter? I haven't delved into the world of connected wide format very often in the past, so this is all new to me (but the FW240 has me psyched on breaking into this market)

Also, am I right in my assumption that plotters can only produce line drawings with no fill or gray scale? (again, this is all new to me so if I'm going to make waves in this market, I guess I had better start doing homework!)

Thanks for any insight you can provide, and I'll let you guys know what I find out as I begin to study!

Brian
Brian:

Here we go. When calculating cost of the HP plotters there are two main costs associated with these systems. Paper and Ink.

The ink is liquid ink the same type used in ink jet printers. I have calculated and done some very good guessing and have arrived at the cost of .07 cents per square foot for the cost of ink on an average HP plotter.

Based on a "d" size drawing which is 24x36 or 6 sqaure feet. The cost for ink is about .42 cents give or take for more or less coverage. I think the cost is higher, but I can not prove it, so I believe I am being conservative at the .07 cents per square foot.

We then have the cost for paper. please remember that the best reproduction on an ink jet plotter with ink jet paper, the same as most ink jet printers. Most companies buy a better grade of paper for thier "black line drawings" (blueprints) and then will buy something cheaper for thier "check plots" (check prints).

The better the paper the higher the cost. I use the cost of .055 per square for paper. Thus with a "d" size drawing the cost for paper is .33 cents.

The total cost per "d" size is the roughly .75 cents per plot (print).

Our retail cost with paper, toner, developer and service is about .063 per square foot or .38 cents per "d" size drawing.

The difference is (rounding) .40 cents per plot (print). This is what the customer will save.

300 plots per month will represent a savings or ROI of $120 per month to the customer.

600 plots = $240

900 plots = $360

Your best way to figure out the customers volume is to ask how many rolls of paper they use per month. Typically the rolls of paper for the plotter come in 150 foot lengths. 150 feet will get the customer 75 "D" size plots.

So in order to have a savings of $120, the customer needs to be using 4 rolls per month.

There are many other savings for the customer, such as scan2file, stopping the outsourcing of copied prints and the time factor to reproduce those plots.

Have to go, hope this helps.

Art

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