Help with forecasting ink usage/coverage etc

[GamecockGrafx]

Wondering if anyone has a way of figuring how much ink coverage you can get from a cartridge. I have an HP Latex 365 which runs seven 775ml ink cartridges. Ink generally lasts a good ways, but you can only get a cost/use report AFTER job is complete. I have a potential customer wanting a 48"x440' mesh windscreen with solid blue background. I will print at 150dpi and just wondering if only one Cyan cartridge will suffice.

Thanks for any help/suggestions.

 

[Christian @ 2CT Media]

Pull your logs and build an Excel calculator to provide the averages. IIRC, when we had the latex 365 at 10 pass 600x600 100% saturation, our ink coverage was around 1.28ml/sqft

Based on that math, you will consume 2,252.8 ml/ink. That ratio of channels is highly dependent on how the contone engine maps your color to ink droplets.

 

[Superior_Adam]

We don't worry about ink usage per job when quoting. You should kind of know what your cost is and pad in your margin and we do a single cost per square foot which includes the ink and material. We don't worry if 1 cart will be enough as you should always have back up ink ready to go as we always have at least 1 full set of inks for all of our printers on the shelf. When a cart is changed a new one is ordered. Ink coverage/usage of a single cart per job is going to be tough to calculate as in that blue background how much is cyan ink being used in conjunction with other colors to make that blue but I guess you can get close.

 

[Stacey K]

Somewhere in here there is a thread (actually 2 threads which were within a few pennies of each other) which estimates HP printer uses about .29 cents per square foot for contour cut and .32 cents for full coverage. I use these dollar amounts for estimating then add my material/laminate.

Christians numbers get me to .33 cents per square foot with my HP 315 that uses 400ml cartridges.

Based on now 3 people's calculations, I feel pretty good about my numbers. I think I'll pull my numbers from my machine and do what Christian said. I'm guessing I'll be in the same area. Personally, within a few pennies is good enough for me to do my estimating.

 

[balstestrat]

Christians numbers get me to .33 cents per square foot with my HP 315 that uses 400ml cartridges.

L315 is with 775ml carts.