Hello. our tenants & Residents group wish to produce a newsletter for distribution to about 500 people in our area. Our problem is that of 'size of gsm'. The newsletter will be A4, coloured, printed on both sides. A trial run did show that 80 gsm allowed some of the typing to be seen through from the other side(s). None of us know how much difference a change of 10 or 20 gsm (max) would make in regard to 'handling'. The Newsletter will be carried by volunteers & posted by hand, through letterboxes. I would appreciate any advice/comments on any gsm increase(s) in line with cost, any folding, handling issues? Thanks for any help/advice. Allen
You could use a lower grammage paper with a higher opacity.
However stiffer paper is actually easier to fold in thirds and post through many letterboxes especially those with bristles on the inside. Flimsy paper just rucks up.
80gsm is the standard for photocopying. Higher weights are usually used for specialist work. They are made in smaller quantities and therefore usually cost much more.
For a print run of 500 I would not try to print it myself and certainly not using an inkjet printer.
If this is to be a regular event then getting a laser-printer would be a good step. Less show-through, higher speed and lower running costs. In fact having the newsletter printed professionally on a colour laser-printer will probably take less time and money than using an inkjet printer.
If you intend to print newsletters regularly then consider a "copyprinter." which is a digital duplicator. It uses old-fashioned silk-screen technology married to a photocopier. Ideal for high-speed high volume printing with moderate print quality.
Quite, that doesn't help with the bleed through, it will be expensive in ink and take an age to print. Time how long it takes to print one copy and multiply by 500... If it takes a minute per side that'll be nearly 17 hours non-stop printing, assuming no jams and the paper tray can take a ream...
If this is going to be regular I'd look for local printshop with a decent colour laser printer or even a proper printing press of some sort. It'll take far less of your time and give a better result.
Depends a bit on the printer and how cheap your consumables are.
You can get a big ugly but powerful workgroup full duplex monochrome printer for around £100 these days and that can easily do 5-600 in an hour without breaking a sweat. We do events programs for the village hall on one. Double sided A4 folded to A5. Mine is a Samsung ML2550 but this is a Dell
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No idea if that one is any good. New stuff on Morgan tends to be there because either it didn't sell or suffered problems with cack handed users being unable to assemble the print engine without wrecking it.
They have changed hands recently and bargains are not so hot these days.
As soon as complex folding into three or stapling is involved I would agree with your numbers. Even 50 hand folded in three is a bit tedious.
And IME you have to be careful to set the "paper type" in the printer driver. With the "normal paper" setting I got finger smudges due to incompletely fixed toner, which I assume is because heavy paper needs more heat.
An industrial strrngth colour laser costs a packet to buy. £500+
If its 4 color laser that buys a lot of printer time.
Total cost on a home colour laser was around £50 in toner for 50, with about 15 minutes of manual labour added in. so at £6 an hour that's £2.50 a shot for double side A4 folded.
When we took it to a printer it was about £300 for a thousand copies. so
30p a shot.
We have learnt our lesson: the home printer is a great proofer, or for a one or two print run, maybe even 10-20 or 50 if there is a total rush on, but anything else we take to our friendly printers.
Not always there are some good but huge and ugly workgroup ones get remaindered from time to time - usually because users cannot put them together reliably and a new easier to assemble model is launched!
I got my original Dell 1320cn for about £130 (the OEM consumables at the time were extortionate, but I wanted near photo quality colour printing onto any media including heavy almost card).
It turned out that a high proportion of them were broken by users who couldn't hold the thing steady enough as they put it together and ruined the print engine. I was able to buy OEM cartridges from these at knock down prices and at one point bought an entire second unit from Morgan just to get the "free" two sets of toners that came with it.
I still have that spare print engine and chassis untouched in the loft. I cannot refill the empty cartridges for less than the going price for a professionally refilled one on eBay/Amazon!
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Solid colour or something? I reckon even at the full OEM price for my toners 4x£80 for nominally 2000 A4 it is about 32p/sheet. I actually have never paid more than £20 per toner cartridge so about 8p/sheet plus cost of the paper. Latest price is actually under £20 for a full set of
4 cartridges. I was very lucky in my choice of colour laser. YMMV
BTW We are mean and don't pay our volunteers to fold them up!
I more or less concur although we do runs up to about 100 on one of my two printers fairly often and cost effectively.
Anything bigger goes to the printers (unless there isn't time).
A thousand what? 100% coverage photographic images?
But at 10% coverage it should work out at less than one set of CMYK. (for my printer under now £20 all up and never more that £320 even if you were daft enough to buy expensive OEM Dell cartridges from Dell)
We did posters in colour - A4 only - *They're only going to shop windows and noticeboards so no need to be bigger. All leaflets for our events are done 4 to an A4 page and chopped up. No point giving people a huge shiny leaflet.
I know one allotment group did a leaflet - they paid £40 for 1000. Insane waste of money. People don't expect glossy full colour photos from community groups - and if they do, then they should question the validity of spending large amounts of money for such stuff.
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