Suggest A Laser Printer for Ultra High Volume?

[bagusbagus]

Any Printer experts here?

Looking for probably an used higher-end Mono Laser printer that is reliable,can take a serious beating,costs peanuts to run & supports the expendable paper trays.

One that is capable of printing out at least 40 pages per minute in Dual Side Duplex mode, has high capacity toners & drums that last a long time & one that is popular enough so you can get the non-genuine toners for cheap?

Anyone have any experience and can suggest some model ranges which are actually good/reliable and not POS Evil things and could survive printing 75-100k pages a month?

I do like the specs/look of something like HP LaserJet Enterprise M609x or M608X or M611dn that has 50ppm printing speed for duplex printing and looks fairly compact,however I have completely no idea which ones are actually good and can survive being used a lot?

[anonymous-user]

I’m a fan of brother printers these days. Maybe something like the hl-l6400 would do?

Also, if it is business critical, consider getting 2 (slightly smaller). You can be sure a printer will break at the most critical time and having 2 might save you a lot of pain

[TheLurker]

Not relevant to answering the question, but could I ask what requires so much printing? Sounds like a massive ammount!

Just curious.

[thebraketester]

Would it not be better to get one supplied and maintained by someone like Xerox or the like?

100,000 pages a month... that some serious printing.

[droopsnoot]

We had a customer that did some big volume printing, I think we sold them a QMS printer (it was many years ago). I seem to recall them calling the engineers out quite often because the paper feed rollers wore out.

JPJPJP said:

I’m a fan of brother printers these days. Maybe something like the hl-l6400 would do?

I used to sell Brother printers and we always had good success with them, however the HL-L6400 is rated for up to 10,000 pages per month on the duty cycle.

[nikaiyo2]

Sharp are very good for high volume printing.

[bristoltype603]

Genuinely curious what needs such high volume printing? I remember 30 years ago people said we'd have the paperless office within 10 years.

[randlemarcus]

Can you ask your local printers for a rough quote? Unless it's 100k of unique A4 prints, I would have thought it worth investigating, unless you have several years of guaranteed business? Printers that hefty come with a matching pricetag.

[bagusbagus]

droopsnoot said:

I used to sell Brother printers and we always had good success with them, however the HL-L6400 is rated for up to 10,000 pages per month on the duty cycle.

says 150,000 ?
I was looking at brothers at first as well as I currently run 2x HL2300d ( The cheapest Home budget lasers you could get at a time, I do more than 10k per month on even those and they are fine..however they are Incredibly slow at 12pages per minute in dual page printing and can only hold 250pages.)
+Have to change the toners/fill up with paper all the time.

I would probably go for the L6400 or L6300 However they are rated at 24 pages per minute in dual mode...Again.. Very slow when some can do 50-60!

[16v stretch]

Xerox B600/B610 seems to fit the bill.

However, if you're printing that much per month, I would be looking at splitting that between a few printers.

[bagusbagus]

16v stretch said:

Xerox B600/B610 seems to fit the bill.

However, if you're printing that much per month, I would be looking at splitting that between a few printers.

Yeah I'm looking to get actually 2 decent ones,
Xerox seems good,only you can't get cheap replacement toners for them - So that's out...


So far Looks like I Should get an Used HP M606x
With replacement toners, the toner printing costs would be 0.1 pence per page.

[bagusbagus]

Anyone Knows about Kyocera printers?
For example the older 4200 or 4300.

Got Good Printing speeds, Toners are Practically Free and one lasts for 25k.
Also says in brochure that for the first 500k pages you only need toner changes, for other hi-end printers the service kit needs to be done at 150-200k and cost way more to do as well.

Have never heard about such printers tho.

[jamoor]

You need a photocopier, try Ricoh

[16v stretch]

bagusbagus said:

Anyone Knows about Kyocera printers?
For example the older 4200 or 4300.

Got Good Printing speeds, Toners are Practically Free and one lasts for 25k.
Also says in brochure that for the first 500k pages you only need toner changes, for other hi-end printers the service kit needs to be done at 150-200k and cost way more to do as well.

Have never heard about such printers tho.

Had a few at my previous job, the 4200DN (which is annoyingly the same name as a tank of a HP printer) always had a really long first print wake up time, even with all the eco mode stuff disabled. Probably not an issue if you're continuously printing. This was 2/3 years ago though, they might have resolved that issue by now.

Also, you can get b600/610 25k page cartridges for about £50 from europe. The 50k page cartridges are nice though.

[loudlashadjuster]

I've run fleets of very high volume printers in the past, mostly HP but also Canon and Ricoh, and have been pitched printing solutions by most of the big providers/resellers.

I'm pretty brand agnostic, I really don't think there's a standout in terms of performance or reliability, what matters more is the running costs and the support, the costs of which can easily become the biggest component. If you're running 50k pages per month and your printer breaks, how long are you willing to be without it?

Budgeting to have spares on-site, and a support contract which aligns with your expected recovery time should be as much of a consideration as ppm or duty cycle.

[4Q]

Hi have a pair of konica Minolta bizhub c300 with sorter/finishers which you can have for free if you want to pick them up from Chesterfield. We replaced them with new printers about 18 months ago and they’ve been getting in the way ever since. They were working fine when last used but might benefit from a service. You can pick new old stock toners and consumables cheaply from eBay.

[droopsnoot]

bagusbagus said:

says 150,000 ?

Sorry, you're absolutely correct, I'm not reading it quite right, the 10,000 per month is "maximum recommended monthly print volume". That's quite a difference, I was mixing the two figures up.

I must confess to being a bit out of touch - my last experience of duplex printing was on a Laserjet IID, and that used to achieve it by printing the front, then feeding the paper out of the back of the printer, doing a three-point turn on it and printing on the back. The number of times people used to grab the paper as it was feeding out of the back, and mess the whole job up.

[Junior Bianno]

Do not buy a standard printer for these volumes. Once you get to these quantities like this things start to break reasonably regularly so you need proper support - as in, a technician to attend. Also, buying toner for standard machines will get expensive quickly.

You can get semi-production mono machines on really cheap "click" rates. Each page click covers your toner, maintenance etc. Speak to Xerox or Konica Minolta. Also, Sharp used to do great deals on this kind of smaller mono machines.

[bagusbagus]

Junior Bianno said:

Do not buy a standard printer for these volumes. Once you get to these quantities like this things start to break reasonably regularly so you need proper support - as in, a technician to attend. Also, buying toner for standard machines will get expensive quickly.

You can get semi-production mono machines on really cheap "click" rates. Each page click covers your toner, maintenance etc. Speak to Xerox or Konica Minolta. Also, Sharp used to do great deals on this kind of smaller mono machines.

That why you get reliable machines in first place which also have cheap toners...When completely beat up- Get the next one.

I think I can squeeze 0.1-0.15 pence per page printing costs (used Printer cost over its lifetime ,non genuine Toners & Any small replacements) - No1 will offer those rates...
Probably looking at 10x more with such service if not even more...

Edited by bagusbagus on Saturday 23 January 02:53

[imck]

Ex Printer Tech. Still do some from time to time.

Probably something on a Click Charge is going to be your best bet. Toner, Consumables and Maintenance covered.
If you only have one Machine you are stuck if it fails.

If you are set on buying.

Toner Cartridges that are just Toner Powder in a Hopper. Kyocera Oki and Brother do this. Possibly others
HP tend to be Toner, Developer and Drum in one.
Refilled Cartridges can be absolute garbage and leak Toner.

Multiple Paper Trays so you are not constantly filling it up.

Spare Maintenance Kits
Kit usually required around 300K Pages and not cheap
Some machines you can tell it you have fitted a Kit even though you haven't.
Others are chipped and expire. There can be workarounds for this.