So you will be able to estimate cost price of the page to a first approximation
#Apfill ink coverage software#
This software helps you calculate ink, toner coverage on page before printing expressed as a percentage. Ask these folks how they are handling this, many have multiple vendors on the floor and have this same challenge across different manufacturers equipment and technologies.Ink usage is usually described by the printer manufactures as so many pages of A4 using 5% coverage. If you all are looking at ink jet and cannot get to Graph, consider the Think conference in October, it is an ink jet users group (sponsored by Canon, but it is not run by us). Knowing you can trust this information is vital to your operation, and knowing your not under pricing a job is huge. You are absolutely right that this issue is becoming (and is already) very important to your bottom line. Obviously I know about Canon's tools, but I would think other vendors have something similar, so ask the manufacturer of your equipment what they have for this. and ask to see "Ink Control" see what the report looks like, and more importantly ask where the information is coming from for the report (i.e. If your going to go to Graph Expo take a few min. This is what makes it very difficult for estimation tools. Even which output color profile you use has an impact. The same exact file run on two different stocks (coated, and uncoated, treated, etc.) will yield different usage. I know that is after the fact, but as you use this type of tool you will get a feel for coverage and expected ink usage, and keep in mind it is very paper dependent. With these reports you can reconcile what you quoted with what was actually used. You are absolutely right, this is why we created "Ink Control" to give you the exact amount of C, M, Y, and K that a job uses when it runs every job, over an entire shift or day, or based on a specific parameter you setup. I would check to see as best you can what the click charge is in your area on high volume machines and then use that as your "cost" - should still be competitive and able to make a profit. Equipment dealers will put a high volume machine out on a pre-determined click charge and they need to be making a profit on these contracts (which will include supplies, repair parts and a technician's costs). The problem with any of the theoretical tools is that how do you know they are accurate or will reflect what your equipment is doing? You should be safe using a standard click charge as a "cost" as long as you are not overpaying for your supplies and repair parts. The only way to accurately account for ink or toner use is on a very long run or over an extended period of time (we do a calculation once a year and average the ink cost over hundreds of thousands of prints to give us an idea where we are at). We run way less work on the ComColor than we should as we are overly cautious and do not want to get caught on the wrong side of this calculation. However - from our point of view - the ink coverage has to be extremely low to justify taking the risk of exceeding the click charge cost by using more ink than we estimated.
#Apfill ink coverage pro#
As parts ware the amount of toner you will use, will fluctuate to some degree.Ī real problem - we run a Riso ComColor InkJet and a Ricoh Pro 651ex for colour work - we are not on a click charge on the ComColor and are on a click charge for the Ricoh (different quality of colour output on the two but some jobs would be acceptable at a lower cost to the customer on the ComColor). Some toner based systems also have an estimation ability, but in those cases it is a bit harder to calculate, due to ware on consumable parts and the like. The tools I reference above for inkjet use actual dot information derived directly from the inkjet heads themselves. Some use TAC, and other things to estimate usage. This requires access to a file though, or you again need to average 10 jobs as mentioned above.īe careful though, not all ink estimation tools are alike. If you had access to the files, you could of course get an accurate number for that specific job.ĬIP data can also be analyzed if you have the ability to create that in your front end systems. In essence you run the file to a virtual digital inkjet printer and it gives you back an ink usage report.If as was suggested above you run 10 jobs to it, you could average the usage for a baseline. However, Canon also has a tool called "TrueProof" which can be setup to calculate the ink usage ahead of time. This is a process to use when running the job for actual usage. For example, here at Canon we have a tool called "ink Control" for certain inkjet printers, that can tell you how much ink will be used on a job by job basis, or even to a side of the sheet level. There are tools in the industry that can help you.
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