Centralised printing and increasing volumes

[localzuk]

We have hit a point with our print volumes here where the largest "office" class copier on the market can't really handle the load now. So, we have a decision to make, either having 2 of them, or moving to a production quality machine such as the Ricoh Pro 8100S.

 

Both options are expensive, and we have limited space.

 

My question is this - what have other schools with large print volumes do in this situation? Our volumes are high as we print work booklets in every subject every week for every pupil...

[jmak]

I'll offer sympathy....

 

Which is more than I've had here for the same problem. The conversation goes like

 

"Why is the printer broken again?"

"Because you're over using it"

"Why didn't you buy a better printer?"

"Because we specified it based on what you've printed for the last three years"

"That's no use. Make it work."

 

So we get it fixed and it works for a month and then the conversation is repeated....

 

As there is no money, I guess we'll keep going until Ricoh refuse to come and fix it....

[JackT]

We have hit a point with our print volumes here where the largest "office" class copier on the market can't really handle the load now. So, we have a decision to make, either having 2 of them, or moving to a production quality machine such as the Ricoh Pro 8100S.

 

Both options are expensive, and we have limited space.

 

My question is this - what have other schools with large print volumes do in this situation? Our volumes are high as we print work booklets in every subject every week for every pupil...

We've just had a meeting going over something similar. According to papercut we're averaging around 15k pages per day and end up about 90k per quarter over what the printers can actually handle.

 

We have 2 of the biggest machines from Konica Minolta in repro and those jam ever other week which an engineer needs to come out and fix. On top of that we have 6 smaller printers in each department but those also break alot aswell.

 

The one suggestion we had was go for a print production copier but those are crazy expensive and we dont have room to store it or move to 3 of their largest machines for our repro room.

[localzuk]

I've had a quote on the Ricoh 8100S and C5100S machines. When I take into account the volumes we've printed over the last 4 years on our current machines, the end result is an extra 5% cost. If I figure in 20% more printing over the next 4 years, the cost drops. The cost per copy is *significantly* cheaper per page.

 

As you say, they are huge though. We'd need something like 3M long space+ for the 8100S. The C5100S isn't quite so massive though.

 

The print quality of them is astonishing though, so it'd also allow us to print super-professional things like our prospectus in-house.

[jmak]

I've had a quote on the Ricoh 8100S and C5100S machines. When I take into account the volumes we've printed over the last 4 years on our current machines, the end result is an extra 5% cost. If I figure in 20% more printing over the next 4 years, the cost drops. The cost per copy is *significantly* cheaper per page.

 

As you say, they are huge though. We'd need something like 3M long space+ for the 8100S. The C5100S isn't quite so massive though.

 

The print quality of them is astonishing though, so it'd also allow us to print super-professional things like our prospectus in-house.

 

I've only had quotes for the rental costs - I'll ask about price/page

[localzuk]

I've only had quotes for the rental costs - I'll ask about price/page

The print cost is a third cheaper from what I'm seeing.

[kearton]

My question is this - what have other schools with large print volumes do in this situation? Our volumes are high as we print work booklets in every subject every week for every pupil...

We did 3.2mil pages last year. At the moment we're doing about 20k pages per week. Don't want to publicly name the make of equipment we use as just had a massive row with my account manager and not presently inclined to give them any 'advertising', but PM me if you want more details and costs.

[john]

Could you not get two of the top end office ones and the link cables that some firms make (assuming they still offer them) would that be easier?

[MatthewL]

If this was me I would get a second machine rather than a bigger machine for a number of reasons:

1. Additional resilience if one if busy or down

2. Often cheaper to buy/lease 2 smaller devices than a big production machine

3. Able to be located say at either end of school to reduce wasted travel time to printer

 

The general basis I work on is at least one per floor if it allows one at each end if its a bigger building but view the view to move around depending on pages printed if you are new to such solution.

[Alis_Klar]

Won't someone think of the trees!

[Guest MD5T]

How do you guys restrict printing? Do you have reprographics and try and force staff that way?

 

I'm interested because staff are trying to print over 1k copies at a time and they're really taking the mick

[FN-GM]

I've had a quote on the Ricoh 8100S and C5100S machines. When I take into account the volumes we've printed over the last 4 years on our current machines, the end result is an extra 5% cost. If I figure in 20% more printing over the next 4 years, the cost drops. The cost per copy is *significantly* cheaper per page.

 

As you say, they are huge though. We'd need something like 3M long space+ for the 8100S. The C5100S isn't quite so massive though.

 

The print quality of them is astonishing though, so it'd also allow us to print super-professional things like our prospectus in-house.

 

If you do go for these you will need 16 amp sockets, something to consider

[localzuk]

If you do go for these you will need 16 amp sockets, something to consider

 

Yeah, already thought about it.

[mavhc]

We did 3.2mil pages last year. At the moment we're doing about 20k pages per week. Don't want to publicly name the make of equipment we use as just had a massive row with my account manager and not presently inclined to give them any 'advertising', but PM me if you want more details and costs.

 

3.2 million A4 sheets is, 200,000 m^2, 16 tonnes of paper.

[ozydave]

We are 7mil sheets of paper since September 2013

SLT don't want to do much about it!

[mavhc]

We are 7mil sheets of paper since September 2013

SLT don't want to do much about it!

 

Should probably say how many pupils in the school.

[ozydave]

Should probably say how many pupils in the school.

 

990 pupils and 125 staff

[localzuk]

Could you not get two of the top end office ones and the link cables that some firms make (assuming they still offer them) would that be easier?

We don't have the space for that sadly.

If this was me I would get a second machine rather than a bigger machine for a number of reasons:

1. Additional resilience if one if busy or down

2. Often cheaper to buy/lease 2 smaller devices than a big production machine

3. Able to be located say at either end of school to reduce wasted travel time to printer

The general basis I work on is at least one per floor if it allows one at each end if its a bigger building but view the view to move around depending on pages printed if you are new to such solution.

We don't have the space for that sadly. In our case, 2 of the high end office models would be more expensive than a single production model. The various framework deals are pretty good for pricing.

How do you guys restrict printing? Do you have reprographics and try and force staff that way?

I'm interested because staff are trying to print over 1k copies at a time and they're really taking the mick

We use PaperCut for controlling printing. All our "little" machines have a max print limit on them, and they eat into teacher print credits. Our mono copier has no limit on it, but staff have a limit of 250 pages colour per month.

 

Our biggest user of printing is booklets. We have a system of half termly work booklets for each subject here. So, that's 550 30+ page booklets printed every 5-6 weeks alone. That's the big issue - the office quality machines really don't like producing so many booklets. The booklet makers aren't designed for that number of clicks.

[kearton]

3.2 million A4 sheets is, 200,000 m^2, 16 tonnes of paper.

Oops... 3.2m printed pages printed but forgot to include the 300k copied too. New total 3.5m.

According to the Papercut Exec report that is 30.79 trees, or just over 11k kg of CO2, or just over 700k lightbulb hours.

[pcstru]

My question is this - what have other schools with large print volumes do in this situation? Our volumes are high as we print work booklets in every subject every week for every pupil...

We have a dedicated repro room with three large copiers, one fancy colour thing and two high volume mono units with various finishing/sorting options. Additionally we have 16 other copiers round the place (we are a large, sprawling site). The volume units are trundling through ~3 million copies a year. We probably have an engineer visit once a month. Last time I did the figures, the volume units did make financial sense (just) but they also scored on overall reliability and are quite crucial coming up to exam time when departments start requesting billions of past papers for landfill and we need all of that 190 pages per minute to keep up with demand. The finishing options also save on post print faffing around.

[DrCheese]

Have you looked at making the workbooks digital? That's a huge amount of paper each week

[localzuk]

Have you looked at making the workbooks digital? That's a huge amount of paper each week

That would be a somewhat long-term project, as it'd mean integrating 1:1 devices into our school curriculum, and enabling their use in every classroom. We have the wifi for that, but my fear would be a) power - we'd need a device that can run all day and b) toughness - we have 9 year olds here, and they aren't exactly light on technology with their sticky fingers and clumsy nature.

 

On top of that, we'd be looking at a £150k investment in equipment for it. That'd be a very hard sell with the bosses.