Canon’s iPF840 wide-format printer
Canon Solutions America discussed the “key factors” in buying a wide-format printer.
The article, on Printing Impressions World, aimed to give a “detailed breakdown” of the factors affecting return-on-investment (ROI), so businesses can “make apples-to-apples comparisons” in order to choose the wide-format “with the highest level of profitability”. It starts by noting that you should “understand the right applications for your customer base”, and know which machines “are a good fit” for your business and clients.
Costs to take into account include equipment, production volumes and selling price, as well as some “hidden” factors like “higher than expected waste” or OEM productivity claims “that don’t match real-life conditions”. Among the key points it discusses in detail included “selling price per square foot”, “hours printing per day”, “work days per month”, “print speed”, “sellable/wastage ratio”, “total printed media per day”, “sellable output”, and “monthly gross revenue”.
It then moves onto materials costs, with more focus given to “media cost per square foot”, “total media cost per month” and “ink cost per month”; before finally moving on to discuss “labour rate per hour”, “labour ratio”, “daily additional overhead”, “monthly labour cost”, “total monthly production costs”, “gross profit”, “monthly maintenance payments” and “lease payments”.
The OEM concluded the article by noting that “to help you calculate your ROI based on the factors above, we have provided a tool to help determine very quickly how fast you can recoup your investment. This tool simplifies the factors described here and turns them into line items for you to input your own numbers. You can also create your own ROI calculator in Microsoft Excel”.