Which mail-printing technology is most cost-effective for your company? When comparing technologies, remember to factor in the hidden expenses that drive up your operating costs, such as maintenance, labor, equipment downtime and lost financial opportunities. HP technology delivers the best total value through low acquisition costs, quick changeovers, easy operation, high reliability and outstanding print quality. Compare for yourself and see the value of HP thermal inkjet technology.

It’s no secret that competition is tough in the mail-printing industry. Electronic communication is becoming more pervasive every day, displacing some traditional printing opportunities. Letter shops, mailing houses, service bureaus and commercial printers face tremendous pressure to cut costs and grow business as their customers continue to demand more flexibility and lower prices.

In the past decade, inkjet technology created great possibilities in mail printing, including personalized messages and affordable color printing. Direct marketers seized the opportunity to create true one-to-one marketing materials that deliver powerful results. But this market shift comes at a price to mail-printing providers, who are now faced with shorter runs and more frequent changeovers—two factors that drive up operating costs. In this environment of narrowing margins, it’s vital to be aware of all the costs —both visible & hidden— associated with owning, maintaining and using a mail printer. The price of ink alone doesn’t tell the whole story. Rather, the total cost of owning a mail printer comes from the cost of consumables, such as ink, as well as less obvious expenses, such as maintenance, labor, downtime and lost financial opportunities. These hidden expenses drive up overall equipment costs.

Hewlett-Packard enables printer manufacturers to deliver the lowest equipment costs in the mail-printing industry. HP’s integrated-circuit technology keeps machine costs low compared to other mail-printing technologies on the market. There are three primary inkjet technologies in the mail-printing industry: continuous inkjet (CIJ), which uses a continuous flow of ink to form images on a page; piezoelectric inkjet (PIJ), which uses mechanical forces to eject ink on demand; and thermal inkjet (TIJ), which uses integrated circuitry to precisely eject ink from hundreds of microscopic nozzles. HP is synonymous with TIJ technology, which delivers high performance and reliability that makes a big difference when considering costs.

Pay up front or pay as you go? It’s a question that bears asking as you explore technology options. Equipment prices can vary by more than 75 percent between different technologies with similar capabilities. That’s because the bulk of the technology is either built into the machine, as it is with CIJ and PIJ technology, or built into the supplies, as with thermal inkjet.

“TIJ technology enables a pay-as-you-print model that makes your money work more effectively than a frontloaded model,” says Hal Jones, HP Specialty Printing Systems market development manager.

Here’s why. Compare the up-front cost of a typical HP TIJ-based system with that of a CIJ printer with similar capabilities. While the ink supplies for the CIJ printer may be priced lower than ink supplies for HP TIJ-based systems, the capital expense for CIJ systems is several times higher. “To offset such large capital expenditures, mail shops are often forced to cut prices to keep their machines busy all day, every day. If you don’t have that high overhead to contend with, you aren’t as likely to sacrifice pricing to get jobs,” says Jones. By contrast, HP TIJ-based systems require a much smaller initial outlay of cash for you to start being productive.

And while it may appear that HP TIJ ink and print-heads may be more expensive to purchase than CIJ and PIJ ink, HP TIJ’s superior performance actually adds up to better value.

Consider, for example, ink lost through frequent purging and priming, and even evaporation. Piezo relies on a mechanical process to force ink through the print-head. This physical movement makes piezo print-heads more susceptible to air bubbles, which requires more ink purging and priming than TIJ technology in which nothing moves but the ink itself. Increased air bubbles can also boost nozzle clogging, which can quickly drive up operating costs. Piezo’s fixed-print-head system can cost thousands of dollars to refurbish and even more to replace. Because faulty print-heads will halt a printing line, businesses often keep a spare print-head on hand, adding several thousand dollars to inventory costs.

Continuous inkjet, on the other hand, uses a pressurized system. A CIJ print-head sends out a stream of ink droplets that pass through a charged tunnel and past a charged deflection plate. Uncharged drops strike a return block and are recycled to the ink module, which is constantly pumping fluid through the system. Whether it’s printing or not, solvent ink is constantly being exposed to the atmosphere, where evaporation occurs. To counter evaporation losses, a make-up fluid is added to the ink, which in turn adds more cost.

In contrast, the TIJ ink-ejection process is highly efficient, using tiny resisters to create a vapor bubble that drives ink out of the print-head and dramatically reduces the risk of nozzle-clogging air bubbles. TIJ print-head’s minimal servicing system provides more economical ink management than PIJ or CIJ technologies, considerably lessening the amount of lost or wasted ink. “TIJ print-heads are designed—and priced—to be replaceable, easily snapping into place to keep equipment up and running,” says Jim Martin, HP SPS product marketing manager. “In fact, you could inventory up to 375 TIJ print-heads before you matched the cost of one piezo print-head, and you could replace nearly 250 print-heads before you equaled the cost of refurbishing a single piezo print-head. And that doesn’t include the cost of labor.”*

* Estimate based on $40 TIJ print-heads, $15,000 piezo print-heads and $10,000 piezo refurbishment cost.