Any printers on the forum - equipment advice please
Discussion
A long story short, I'm looking for some recommendations for equipment to support greeting card printing
My wife runs a small printing company selling gifts and personalised items such as mugs, clothing and so on; with 99% of items being rude and offensive. It started out as a little sideline as a bit of fun 5 years ago, with the profit mainly being used to pay for holidays and treats, however, it's been growing year on year, with this year seeing around 30% growth - in part due to additional clothing lines and canvas prints.
One of the things she has increasingly been asked for this year is greetings cards and gift boxes, something that will fit in quite nicely with her existing product range (circa 2.5k products for around 700 individual designs, though she generally adds 3-4 new designs each week) - the challenge is, I can't find any reliable information online about the equipment that would be needed. Does anyone on here have any recommendations? My initial thoughts were card stock on laser, then cold laminated, but can't find anything to support
Current kit includes
Roland Eco-Sol wide format
A3 & A4 Oki White toner laser
A3 & A4 Ricoh Sublimation
Various Brother A3 & A4 laser
Graphtec Plotter/Cutter
My wife runs a small printing company selling gifts and personalised items such as mugs, clothing and so on; with 99% of items being rude and offensive. It started out as a little sideline as a bit of fun 5 years ago, with the profit mainly being used to pay for holidays and treats, however, it's been growing year on year, with this year seeing around 30% growth - in part due to additional clothing lines and canvas prints.
One of the things she has increasingly been asked for this year is greetings cards and gift boxes, something that will fit in quite nicely with her existing product range (circa 2.5k products for around 700 individual designs, though she generally adds 3-4 new designs each week) - the challenge is, I can't find any reliable information online about the equipment that would be needed. Does anyone on here have any recommendations? My initial thoughts were card stock on laser, then cold laminated, but can't find anything to support
Current kit includes
Roland Eco-Sol wide format
A3 & A4 Oki White toner laser
A3 & A4 Ricoh Sublimation
Various Brother A3 & A4 laser
Graphtec Plotter/Cutter
vaguelyfamiliar said:
Depending on equipment costs, that may be the route we have to take, realistically, she is not aiming to compete with Moonpig and similar - probably selling around 1500 or so a year as add-ons - but does like to have control of the end to end process
That volume is nowhere near enough to go for a commercial solution. Short run greetings card printers will be using a digital printing press. Probably something like an HP Indigo for the printing or a Konica Minolta system at the cheaper end of the market. Then you need the cutting and finishing kit. It really depends on what volumes you're talking about. It's going to need to be a pretty high volume to make it cost-effective.
So, for greeting cards you'll need:
Digital Printer/press that supports duplex printing of 350gsm-400gsm card
Laminator
Creaser
Guillotine
A digital printing press is going to be the major cost. The cheapest way into these is usually something like the OKI pro series, although running costs are high. Mid-range Konica Minoltas, Ricohs, Xerox etc are where the majority of the digital printing market is, and they all tend to charge by the "click" - ie, you buy the machine, and then all the service and consumables are supplied by the manufacturer/reseller with a cost per sheet printed. HP indigos are the high end of the market - expensive to buy, expensive to run and only really for the well established printer.
Laminator - cold laminating isn't really a thing with small format. You'll need a hot laminator. The best entry level laminators are these - Matrix duos - https://www.vivid-online.com/products/matrix-duo-m...
Creaser - you can get all sorts from hand-operated to highly automated. Take your pick from this sort of stuff - https://www.ashgrovetrading.com/search/creaser
Guillotine - you need one of these to cut down the cards so that they have full bleed. Also, the trick of digital printing is to put multiple jobs on one sheet and cut them down, thus reducing the click cost. These basically - https://www.wellfinished.co.uk/product-category/gu...
You can buy cheaper Chinese versions of pretty much all of the above on ebay. They are cheap for a reason however.
To produce cards to a professional standard you really need all of the above. Until you've got scale, it's going to be a lot easier just to use a digital printing company. Send me a PM if you want some costs from us.
So, for greeting cards you'll need:
Digital Printer/press that supports duplex printing of 350gsm-400gsm card
Laminator
Creaser
Guillotine
A digital printing press is going to be the major cost. The cheapest way into these is usually something like the OKI pro series, although running costs are high. Mid-range Konica Minoltas, Ricohs, Xerox etc are where the majority of the digital printing market is, and they all tend to charge by the "click" - ie, you buy the machine, and then all the service and consumables are supplied by the manufacturer/reseller with a cost per sheet printed. HP indigos are the high end of the market - expensive to buy, expensive to run and only really for the well established printer.
Laminator - cold laminating isn't really a thing with small format. You'll need a hot laminator. The best entry level laminators are these - Matrix duos - https://www.vivid-online.com/products/matrix-duo-m...
Creaser - you can get all sorts from hand-operated to highly automated. Take your pick from this sort of stuff - https://www.ashgrovetrading.com/search/creaser
Guillotine - you need one of these to cut down the cards so that they have full bleed. Also, the trick of digital printing is to put multiple jobs on one sheet and cut them down, thus reducing the click cost. These basically - https://www.wellfinished.co.uk/product-category/gu...
You can buy cheaper Chinese versions of pretty much all of the above on ebay. They are cheap for a reason however.
To produce cards to a professional standard you really need all of the above. Until you've got scale, it's going to be a lot easier just to use a digital printing company. Send me a PM if you want some costs from us.
I've looked into cards in the post, There seems very little money in in-house mass-produced full digital print cards unless you are producing thousands ands selling in bulk to supermarkets.
The method that does seem viable for a small business like this are the hand-made cards (eg letterpress and stick-on/glitter etc).
Personally I wouldn't film-laminate greetings cards. its a big expense + additional process, and the laminate can peel in storage if they havene tall sold that season. I would consider wet-laminating, but would prefer the unlaminated router if possible.
The method that does seem viable for a small business like this are the hand-made cards (eg letterpress and stick-on/glitter etc).
Personally I wouldn't film-laminate greetings cards. its a big expense + additional process, and the laminate can peel in storage if they havene tall sold that season. I would consider wet-laminating, but would prefer the unlaminated router if possible.
Plus remember that the laminating film won't "stick" to digital toner to any great extent. OK if it's just a few colours on a white background, but with full coverage, cut to a bleed, the laminate will peel off almost immediately.
Your answer here is to get very friendly with your local Prontaprint-type shop, and get repeat-customer discounts. And if you must laminate, then design the cards appropriately, referring to the above.
Your answer here is to get very friendly with your local Prontaprint-type shop, and get repeat-customer discounts. And if you must laminate, then design the cards appropriately, referring to the above.
Sebring440 said:
Plus remember that the laminating film won't "stick" to digital toner to any great extent. OK if it's just a few colours on a white background, but with full coverage, cut to a bleed, the laminate will peel off almost immediately.
Your answer here is to get very friendly with your local Prontaprint-type shop, and get repeat-customer discounts. And if you must laminate, then design the cards appropriately, referring to the above.
I have no problems with laminating over digital toner based card, even with full coverage. Be matt or gloss lamYour answer here is to get very friendly with your local Prontaprint-type shop, and get repeat-customer discounts. And if you must laminate, then design the cards appropriately, referring to the above.
Sebring440 said:
Plus remember that the laminating film won't "stick" to digital toner to any great extent. OK if it's just a few colours on a white background, but with full coverage, cut to a bleed, the laminate will peel off almost immediately.
This isn't correct. We laminate all sorts of digital products daily. Full bleed, dark colours, multiple substrates. That's not to say it's easy - it takes a lot of setting up to get it to work consistently. We use one of these...
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