Portable colour laser printers

[seabird]

Our Konica Minolta 2400w Magicolor, used for printing A4 maps at our Level3 events is nearing the end of its useful life.

Does anyone have any recommendations from the current crop of printers?

We need something that is
1. both PC and Mac compatible
2. can handle waterproof paper - preferably Xerox Nevertear. If you know a model that can handle Pretex does anyone know where you can obtain non-industrial quantities of the paper (max 1000 sheets of A4)
3.can be easily carried by one person up and down stairs and travels well in a car boot.

[RJ]

We have just upgraded to a XEROX Phaser 8560, since the Minolta needed all the consumables at once. It uses solid ink technology and although the ink has a plastic/wax feel to it on the paper it is excellent reproduction. It prints at 600dpi giving very clear maps. Prints onto Pretex no problem; you just need to set the paper weight to 'glossy' which slows the paper through the fuser.

Several clubs in NWOA have just purchased a large quantity of Pretex. I'm sure there are plenty of opportunities to join in with a collective 'buy'.

The printer is bulkier than a Minolta and about the same weight. It will travel OK. Just make sure it is kept in the upright position. It has a USB connection. Prints anything at the rate of a sheet per five seconds! Check the Xerox website for compatibility with MAC and PC.... but don't think there is a problem.

Cost is £400 and includes a small set of toners. Plus Xerox are giving a complete set of toners when you register the machine, which is worth close on £200. The solid ink blocks are cleaner and much easier to 'see' when you are running out. I think the only other consumable is a cleaner unit?

As we print about 17,000 A4 a year it will soon pay for itself.

[Wayward-O]

Whatever printer you eventually go for, it's well worth getting some test prints from different printers before you make your choice - but what do you use as a test file?

As part of the IOF Map Commission Print Tech Project, a test sheet was produced to enable the capabilities of different printers to be assessed and is available in both OCAD 8 and PDF format at the following location:

http://lazarus.elte.hu/mc/print-tech/index.html

Note that even though this is an official IOF test sheet, the colours (in the PDF at least) do not have the CMYK values specified in ISOM and ISSOM (nor are the colours used in the PDF files for ISOM and ISSOM). The colours in the test sheet PDF and the ISOM and ISSOM PDF documents are nearly all identical or within 1 on RGB values (ISOM and ISSOM are identical for all colours), but the brown values vary more (I read the colours directly from the PDFs using a small utility called ColorPix.exe).

[RJ]

I'm not sure Wayward-O that the test for the colours is really what you need. Line thickness and dpi are the important factors. So the OCAD file has to be tinkered with to get the perfect combination of greens for runnability.... so what. All printers are slightly different in what they do with the colours of the 'areas' on maps, but they are becoming better and match a specific colour model.

My advice would be to get any map you choose printed on the paper you are going to use. See what that looks like. You can alter the CMYK balance according to what you want your map to look like. If your map has a lot of slow run and walk adjacent areas you might like to improve the contrast for clarity...... etc.

[Wayward-O]

The IOF Map Commission Print Tech Project test sheet has been designed to test ALL the capabilities of a printer that are pertinent to producing good O maps. The test sheet has been specifically configured to test dimensional accuracy in two directions, fine resolution and the ability to produce the overprint effect of the spot colour printing process as well as good colours, acurate screen combinations, the evenness of large areas of single colour and accurate colour alignment (lack of fringing, clear contours within green screens, etc). The test sheet will test a printer more than any single O map could.

Originally, a spot colour printed version was available (not sure if these can still be obtained). The intention was that the test sheet could be printed from the OCAD 8 test file on the target printer and the colours tweaked to match the spot colour printed version. The revised CMYK values could then be sent to the project for collating. It is therefore telling that the CMYK values of the test sheet are not those specified in ISOM and ISSOM but have been tweaked already, possibly due to inherent differences between the colour gamut of spot colour printing and those of laser, inkjet and other non-offset technologies.

[RJ]

......to test ALL the capabilities of a printer that are pertinent to producing good O maps.....

I'm sure it is. And without doubt the printers that do the best job will have the higher price tags. However, the mass market end.... the desk top versions.... are now so good that they will give perfectly adequate copy for our orienteering needs. 95% of maps are produced for the small informal and local colour coded events. So long as a sample map gives you a good, readable version that you can compete with then it can go on the list of possibles for buying.

Other considerations like running costs, portability and initial cost then become the dominant factors in choosing what to get. Because the technology is moving so fast it is not worth buying an expensive machine for a ten year working life. Aim for three years! Look where we have come from in the last five or six years!

[RJ]

Have just downloaded and printed off the PrintTech test sheet. The Xerox gives excellent colour matching without any tweaking. The colours look right to the eye, but I haven't done a comparision with a Pantone colour swatch.

What I did try, was setting the line width in OCAD print window under Options. You can set the intensity and the line width as a percentage. With line width at 80% there is a very noticable improvement in resolution when reading the highly complex piece of map on the sample sheet. Looks like we have a good machine!!

Suggest you send the PDF version of the test sheet to any company you are thinking of buying a machine from. But don't forget the type of media that you will be printing on as well. You may have to send them a couple of Pretex sheets!

[geomorph]

... Because the technology is moving so fast it is not worth buying an expensive machine for a ten year working life. Aim for three years! Look where we have come from in the last five or six years!

Sad reflection. You can get a printer for a ten year life but nobody wants them cos the technology is moving so fast; on the other hand try getting some domestic items that last more than 2 (always last 13 months to beat the warranty).

So if you do want a 3 year life printer AND you have a choice of equally good ones, get one with the proven highest re-cycle capabilities or at least shown to have the lowest noxious effects when disposed of.

[awk]

Sad reflection. You can get a printer for a ten year life but nobody wants them cos the technology is moving so fast

Gets worse....it would actually be cheaper for my school to replace the printer everytime cartridges ran out than buy replacement cartridges. Just couldn't bring ourselves to do it though.

[Gonzo]

We looked into this some months ago and there were other factors. Off the Xerox web site the cost per printed page at 30% coverage was about 20p I think for an A4. Believe that included the cleaning kits and toner but not of course the capital cost/depreciation or the paper used.
Also our Xerox dealer said that if we used it in adverse weather conditions i.e. in a tent(!) then quality could be affected and warranty void.
At the time it was our view that we would print small quantities 'in-house' and larger events at one of the companies offering their excellent service. I have seen nothing that would change my mind about that as the cost was not significantly more, most of our maps have more than 30% ink coverage so the cost rose, we could not accuratley cost events, we have to pay for our own wastage and we were not confident enough to rely on printing maps on the day in case of breakdown and a large number of very disappointed orienteers having travelled a long way to find no maps available.