The aim of this document is to provide a guideline to help customers calculate their real cost per copy of a certain image in a fast and cost-efficient way on the HP Latex 1500 Printer and the HP Latex 3000 Series Printer. For calculating the cost per copy, the ink and substrate printed area values are needed. Therefore, the new process provided ensures in a very short run that the ink and media consumption considered for the cost per copy calculation is just the ink and media used for printing the target image.
Instructions
The process consists of adding a certain job before and after the required image, and printing them in a different print mode to that of the image selected.
- Select on IPS the PRIMARY COLORS image found at C:\Users\hplatex\Documents\HP IPS\CostPerCopy to print in pmode: 3 passes.
- Select on IPS the image to print in a print mode different to 3 passes. IMPORTANT: this job should contain at least one row of the image ripped in the way that the customer will do in production.
- Select on IPS the PRIMARY COLORS image found at C:\Users\hplatex\Documents\HP IPS\CostPerCopy to print in pmode: 3 passes.
4. Print the 3 jobs. The total amount of ink and media printed per job can be found in Print Care.
5. This data can be used for the cost per copy calculation.
NOTES:
- Extend the width of the job to the width of the substrate that the customer will use in normal production, by adding several copies of the image.
- HP recommends using a print mode for the PRIMARY COLORS image similar to the print mode for the image to be printed, but not the same.
- The accuracy for calculating the ink consumption of a certain job is 80%.
- Total printed area vs. image area. Be aware that PrintOS applications use the total substrate consumption including margins. Do not use PrintOS values for calculating the cost per copy.
Cost per copy calculation using Print Care
Go to the “Product Information” menu -> Click on the “Job Accounting” left tab and then “Ink Consumption” -> Use the “Export” option to extract data for calculation.
From the following Print Care snapshot:
- Use the “Color Consumption” column for ink (measured in liters).
- Use the “Total Printed Area” column for square meters printed.
The rationale behind the method
The ink consumption reported by the printer is the one used during printing including servicing. The printer servicing routines vary depending on the printer usage and will be reported at any time they are being executed on the current and consequent job. This behavior can generate many discrepancies in the ink consumption for the same image depending on the previous state of the printer.
In the HP Latex printers, the first and the last job of the queue require extra routines that consume ink. During initialization, the printheads are cleaned and warmed up. Before capping the printheads, they need to be cleaned to ensure their reliability.
Although the ink consumed during initialization and finishing routines is negligible when running normal production if we try to calculate the cost per copy by printing just one image the value will be significant. If the job queue is set up with only one image all the ink consumed during initialization and finishing will be assigned to the job, distorting the cost per copy value.
The PRIMARY COLORS image has been defined to ensure nozzles from pens are all firing properly so no additional servicing will be required for the image selected.
It is important that the job is not grouped by the IPS. If jobs queued have the same print mode, the IPS groups them. When jobs are grouped, the accounting is reported for the group and the total consumptions are distributed between the individual jobs applying an estimation. To avoid grouping, consecutive jobs should have different print modes.
An easy way to identify that the jobs have not been grouped is to check that a grey line appears between them in the preview:
