Latex vs Solvent coverage per ml

[Kemble]

Just curious if anyone knows/has tested/share industry knowledge, what the ratio of latex vs solvent ink coverage is per ml? Basically, what I'm wondering is, if I wanted to print say 10 panels (58" x 110") of a solid color in latex and then in solvent, will I use the same, less, or more of one kind of ink vs the other?

I'm considering swapping out our (2) HP 800's for (2) Epson 80600's and what I want to determine is if I could use my known latex ink utilization for the past year to estimate my future solvent ink utilization.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Pauly]

You're asking the wrong question.

You should be asking the following.
Which is cheaper / more efficient to run
Which is cheaper per ML per M2 / SQFT

I dont know the ink pricing between the 2, but they wont be the same. so your ink coverage question wont be a very valid answer.

 

[Kemble]

All I'm looking for is if I go through say 10,000 ml of Latex Cyan in 4 months. How much would I have gone through if I printed the same jobs in solvent. Would it be more, or less, or about the same?

 

[victor bogdanov]

Have Epson print you a sample of your file and have them tell you how much ink was used. Compare than to your latex.

 

[Ahmed Samy Nagada]

Latex uses less ink than cheap quality solvent inks. Although Latex ink consumption is almost the same or slightly more than using premium ink like Mutoh UMS

 

[greysquirrel]

if you are going through that much cyan, you should nix both of these platforms and look at the Colorado...$.08/sq'

 

[Stacey K]

Someone on here said latex for 100% coverage is about 32 cents square foot. Contour cut coverage about 28 cents. That included the electricity but not substrate. I wish I could find the post, there was very good info in it.

 

[JBurton]

Someone on here said latex for 100% coverage is about 32 cents square foot. Contour cut coverage about 28 cents. That included the electricity but not substrate. I wish I could find the post, there was very good info in it.

So I print at 20 passes, 120% density.
I've used 53,000 ml of ink, on 62,000 ft^2 of material.
Ink cost at $163/775ml gives you about $0.21/ml
0.21 * 53,000 is $11,130 spent on ink.
If I divide that across all of my 62k square feet, 11,130/62,000 = $.1795/ft^2
I guess if you figure $.10 in electricity, then that's pretty close.

Can someone with a solvent figure up their total ink to substrate ratio and calculate cost?

 

[SightLine]

Only thing I can easily add is we use Bordeaux MS33 solvent ink in our Mimaki (2 liter bags for Mimaki MBIS3 bulk system) and our cost per ml is about $0.09.

 

[JBurton]

Only thing I can easily add is we use Bordeaux MS33 solvent ink in our Mimaki (2 liter bags for Mimaki MBIS3 bulk system) and our cost per ml is about $0.09.

Can you pull data on how much ink you've used vs how much substrate you've printed on?

 

[Stacey K]

So I print at 20 passes, 120% density.
I've used 53,000 ml of ink, on 62,000 ft^2 of material.
Ink cost at $163/775ml gives you about $0.21/ml
0.21 * 53,000 is $11,130 spent on ink.
If I divide that across all of my 62k square feet, 11,130/62,000 = $.1795/ft^2
I guess if you figure $.10 in electricity, then that's pretty close.

Can someone with a solvent figure up their total ink to substrate ratio and calculate cost?

That is spectacular! I'm so thankful for smart people like you to calculate this for me. I suppose I could figure it out but the question is...will I? The answer is...probably not.

 

[Kemble]

This is all great info and exactly how I would determine our ink cost.

What I'm trying to determine is if you printed the same exact jobs (53,000 ml of ink) on an Epson S80600L, would you have used the same, more, or less ink.

In the past 6 months, we have gone through 151,000 ml of ink between our 2 HP 800 Latex printers. I'm just curious if we would have used the same, more, or less ink if we had 2 S80600L's instead.


According to an Epson rep, he told me the Epson S80600L uses 30% less ink than an HP 800 Latex due to the size of the pixels dropped, 12 picoliter on an HP vs 4.2 picoliter on an Epson. So according to him, those same jobs that we used 151,000 ml of ink on our HP 800's would have only used 106,000 ml of ink on Epson S80600's. But I take it for what it's worth because that info came from an Epson Rep.

 

[White Haus]

According to an Epson rep, he told me the Epson S80600L uses 30% less ink than an HP 800 Latex due to the size of the pixels dropped, 12 picoliter on an HP vs 4.2 picoliter on an Epson. So according to him, those same jobs that we used 151,000 ml of ink on our HP 800's would have only used 106,000 ml of ink on Epson S80600's. But I take it for what it's worth because that info came from an Epson Rep.

Yeah I'm not sure that picoliter size translates to ink consumption, but I could be wrong. Salesmen will tell you literally anything to make their offering sound better and make a sale.

 

[Kemble]

Yeah I'm not sure that picoliter size translates to ink consumption, but I could be wrong. Salesmen will tell you literally anything to make their offering sound better and make a sale.

Agreed

 

[balstestrat]

Even that 12 picoliter size is wrong..

 

[MikePro]

Onyx allows you to rip files and it will estimate amount of ink used. I haven't tried installing a driver for a printer I don't have, but I'm sure its possible to rip some of your old files and compare values of ink consumption/cost. It might not be precise, but its been pretty accurate for me in the past to confirm if I could run a job overnight with the ink I had remaining in my cartridges.

idk, i guess if you're curious to find average costs then crowdsourcing would be the way to go, but I'd be trying to calculate your cost to print per square foot, by assuming what would be your MAX cost to print per square foot.
at one point, i just calculated assuming full coverage rich black to be about $0.32psf on my latex, but that was before Bidenomics.
When I was printing solvent, it was around $0.25 with OEM inks and it dropped to like $0.17 with Bordeaux 3rd party, but that was also a decade ago.

I think solvent mayyyy still be slightly cheaper since it doesn't require optimizer channel, and HP LOVES making money on their ink, but minimal difference unless you wanna haggle a few bucks difference per roll.

 

[solock]

Printing to an Epson R5070, an Epson S80600 and previously to a GS6000 over the long haul we have found 1ml/sqft is close enough to be safe for ink cost calculations.
If its mostly white obviously under 1ml/sqft, but a heavy run of ink, or a ton of head cleanings, ink purchases vs what the machine says material consumption we find that 1ml/sqft is pretty damn close.

So cost per ml = cost per sqft

 

[White Haus]

Printing to an Epson R5070, an Epson S80600 and previously to a GS6000 over the long haul we have found 1ml/sqft is close enough to be safe for ink cost calculations.
If its mostly white obviously under 1ml/sqft, but a heavy run of ink, or a ton of head cleanings, ink purchases vs what the machine says material consumption we find that 1ml/sqft is pretty damn close.

So cost per ml = cost per sqft

It can't be that simple!!!! Lol. I'll have to test that out next time I'm tracking ink consumption.

 

[JBurton]

It can't be that simple!!!! Lol. I'll have to test that out next time I'm tracking ink consumption.

He's pretty close, at least going off my numbers, .18 estimated $/ft vs .21 actual $/ml, assuming I'll print a whole roll, 750sq/ft, that 3 cents difference accounts for a $22.50 difference. I have one customer that will order batches of vinyl for partial wraps, he lets me run a whole roll's worth per order, to get the best price he can. Those orders push $6,000 each. I think I can kindly ignore that $22.50 without losing much sleep...