Printing Costs

TCM provides free printing to its members, for work-related matters and for printing related to College supervisions. Sometimes people wish to do private printing which is clearly outside what it is reasonable for the Group to pay for, and wish to put money into the coffee system to re-imburse the Group. Helpful figures for this are below.

Laser Printers

A sheet of A4 paper costs around 0.5p.

Toner costs vary widely depending on what is printed. Standard text and line graphs are generally around 5% coverage, whereas photo-like images can be many times that. Black toner is around 1p/side at 5% coverage, and colour toner around 2p/side. Other consumables (e.g. fuser and transfer belt) may be as much as 0.25p/side. The B&W printers are very slightly cheaper

So duplex, black text, output is around 3p/sheet.

A0 printer

The largest consumable cost is the media.

Our standard glossy paper costs around 80p/foot (or £80 for a 100' roll), and A0 is four feet.

Fabric costs around £3/foot (or £150 for a 50' roll).

Ink is quite expensive, at around 43p/ml. One can see how much ink has been used for recent jobs from the printer's accounting page. Again it varies greatly according to the output, but is likely to be around 4ml for an A0 poster.

The three printheads are expected to last for up to 1000ml of ink each, and cost around £70 each, so the total consumables cost per ml of ink is about 50p.

So an A0 poster is likely to be around £5 on paper and around £14 on fabric.

Photocopier

We provide the paper, and then pay a fixed price per page. The company with the service contract then provides toner etc. The cost for a colour page is several times that for a B&W one, so it is best to force it into B&W mode unless colour is wanted - leaving it on "auto" can be expensive! My memory says that it is around 6p for a colour page, and around 1p for B&W, plus paper.

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This page last updated July 2018.