Anyone know anything about commercial printers? I'm looking

I've worked in a print centre before mate, and I can tell you that for 2k you'll be able to do very little.

The type of printer that will do magazine pages will be different to one that can do posters and packaging, etc. They are dedicated machines that cost anywhere from £800 (An A3 laser printer) to £5000+ (A wide format Poster-printer).

Then you need to consider toners, inks, paper stocks, binding machines and materials, the space to put this shit, etc.

>>305757
i don't know much about types of printers, would you recommend any that would be good enough for like just printing a3 posters, up to 300dpi, different tones and paper.

>>305759
nah, don't remember specific models, soz. If I were you I'd work in a printshop for a few weeks, there are a lot of subtleties to it that will help you; right now it sounds like you're fumbling in the dark a bit. Never a good spot to start a business from.

It depends on the stock, quantity, turnaround, and the particular printer themselves.

You know you can call a few and get quotes, right?

That's what designers do...

>>305795
I ask the dealers?

Isn't it cheaper to just ask a print to do it for you, than building this whole thing in your office?

>>305869
he wants to be the printer.

i know a few, and all of them apprenticed. i'd suggest doing likewise.

>>305751
you don't want to do this unless you are on a 4- 6 year contract, buying a machine outright is stupid, they break at the drop of a hat and without a service agreement which covers toners parts and labor you will be up for shitloads for a tech to come out,
I literally threw out a 6 yr old canon production machine (c7000vp)because it was out of service agreement and I couldn't get more than a couple hundred prints out of it before a major fault.
Any production printer salesman (keyword salesman) will tell you anything about what the machine can do to make it sound great when in reality they have no idea. for example anything that is not a belt fed fuser like the xerox color 1000 series with a fiery RIP will be behind any crappy walk in off the street printshop.
printing is not a great game to be in mate I have been printing for 8 years and now am doing all design and prepress not operating machines but still manage the guys who do run our kit.

The only thing I know about commercial printers is that in terms of colour reproduction, the HP Indigo series is like the closest you'll get to litho cause it uses liquid inks instead of powder inks. But im sure it costs more than 2k cause its fucking massive and as others have said I don't think you can really get much from a commercial printer for around 2k.

The printer is just the beginning as well because the ink is what is really gonna fuck you. We have these shitty office printers at university which we use for most of our research files but a set of toner cartridges costs around £500. We probably swap it out every 1-2 months.

>>306077
The HP indigo is great but it is a princess and you need to have a wet ink station.

the training to run the machine is at HP which costs $10K and takes 2 weeks.

>>305885
how does one get an apprenticeship at a print shop?
i've finished 3 years+ of gd. just walk into a shop with your portfolio?

>>306077
>>306081

The HP Indigo is indeed a princess, but the quality is very nice. Wet inks aren't a problem, just something you need to keep managing.

The whole station + a laser cutting station cost us around 78k to buy and install. Inks cost about 400€ per bag (2 liters) and printing takes about 8 - 12 ml / m2 depending on what colors and how much blending etc.etc.

All in all I'd say it's around 8-10€ per m2 in material cost (sticker material, plastics, laminate, inks, cutting, packaging costs) and add to that the occasional service (about once every two months).

- - -

For smaller printing services and applications I'd suggest looking into Mimaki or Mutoh ValueJet series. For cutting stickers we use a Summa S2T.

The ValueJet and Mimaki both take very little maintenance and they're relatively cheap to purchase initially and run. And there's a plethora of materials available for both. And the Summa S2T (the T at the end is very important) is just an amazing machine for cutting.