Alright, before we move forward let's get the monthly duty cycle thingy out of the way. All manufacturers will advertise a Monthly Duty Cycle, most when reading this will not interpret this correctly, some may even think that a Monthly Duty Cycle of 85,000 pages per month means that this printer can and will print 85,000 pages each and every month! That statement is not correct and as far as I'm concerned Manufacturers should get out of the habit of reporting a Monthly Duty Cycle. What is actually meant is that the printer may be able to achieve that volume per month on occasions.
But, let me give you a small scenario with the occasional duty cycle of 85,000 pages per month on the Xerox ColorQube 8570DN. First, the printer is rated at a speed of up to 40 pages per minute in color. In a recent report from PC Advisor they stated the the speed for a full page 22mb full page color photo exited at 2.1 ppm (pages per minute). Let's use this scenario with a print speed of 2.1 pages per minute. In one hour we would have 126 pages printed. Now we'll take 85,000 pages and divide by the hourly speed of 126 pages. It would take roughly 674 hours to reach the 85,000 page mark. Considering there is 160 work hours per month, it would take 4.2 months to run the 85,000 pages. :(
Remember we're having fun with this, different files will produce different print speeds. One of the keywords in how manufacturers rate print speeds is the word "upto", in the case of the Xerox ColorQube it's "upto" 40 pages per minute. Now, if the printer was capable of 40 pages per minute in color, it would take 35.4 hours to run the 85,000 pages and that's not counting the time to replace the paper. The ColorQube has a 525 sheet paper tray, thus you'd need to fill the paper tray almost 162 times!
To be fair, the ColorQubes recommended monthly volume is 8,000 pages per month per Xerox web page. Additional items that I find annoying is that there is no clarification if the 8,000 recommended or the 85,000 monthly duty cycle is a combination of monochrome (black) and color. I would assume by reading the brochure that I could run all color through the unit. Well, I went and read the brochure and it's amazing that there is no recommended monthly volume on the brochure, however what's mentioned twice is the Monthly Duty Cycle of 85,000 pages! :(
To the cost per page:
The 8,000 color pages per month based on a 20% coverage of the document means the consumable (solid ink and solid ink maintenance kit) cost per page will be .1230 cents for color and .0208 for monochrome (black). Your monthly cost for consumables not including parts or service for color will cost you a whopping $984.00 per month. Over the course of 60 months, you'll spend an estimated $59,040!!!!
Well, what happens when if my documents average 40% coverage?
The 8,000 color pages per month based on a 40% coverage of the document means the consumable (solid ink and solid ink maintenance kit) cost per page will be .2427 cents for color and .0208 for monochrome (black). Your monthly cost for consumables not including parts or service for color will cost you a whopping $1,941.60 per month. Over the course of 60 months, you'll spend an estimated $116,496!
Take a peak here for some page coverage examples.
End result is if you are need of reproducing 8,000 color pages per month, there are many alternatives that will save thousands of dollars such as a true Color Multifunctional Copier/Printer. These types of machines can have a color cost per page of under .10 cents per page which includes all consumables, on-site maintenance, labor and parts! You can take the extra money that you saved by reading this and send me the difference! :) If you are interested in a Color Multifunctional Copier/Printer check out our other site and we'll get you hooked up with a Print4Pay Hotel Cost per Page expert that would be more than happy to prepare a cost savings scenario for you!
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