Issue #0526/1 - Who takes any notice of Dot Matrix printers half way through the first decade of the 21st Century? But should we be so quick to turn our backs on a technology that can offer significant savings?
Mostly ignored, as an outdated technology that is largely irrelevant to modern life, Epson has just announced the latest in its range of 2×9-pin dot matrix printers.
This leaves us wondering why printer manufacturers continue to invest in the design and development of new models in an age when colour laser presents itself as the Holy Grail of printing, pushing even mono lasers into the shadows, and photo inkjets rule the personal market.
Inevitably, laser printer technology, and colour laser in particular, has swept through the majority of hard copy applications because of its perceived speed, quality, lower noise levels and sheer ‘appeal’. Dot Matrix is reserved largely for applications where the printer is located in a dirty environment, ‘out of sight and out of mind’ (e.g. warehouses and wholesalers) and where the output is deemed ‘not worthy of a laser printer’. In addition to these applications, dot matrix printers are also targeted at back office banking and financial applications.
However, we need to ask ourselves the question, “have more applications been ported to laser technology than is justified and has this been detrimental to the bottom line of the companies concerned?” Equally inevitably, the instant response is sure to be “don’t be ridiculous”!
But, consider the facts - huge quantities of paper are used every year in the production of basic reports that:
- are not customer facing
- are exceedingly transitory (perhaps having a life as short as a few hours)
- are usually required in multiple copies for sharing round a table.
Alternatively, the pages might be produced for record keeping and archiving.
So, is it necessary to have laser printed pages for these types of applications (and more), when the total cost of producing those pages can easily be 45%, and as much as 82%, higher than the cost of producing them on a laser printer?
Epson DFX9000Bearing in mind that the DFX9000 is a 136 column dot matrix printer, meaning A3 printing, the comparison with A3 printers is most appropriate. A 20% premium for the hardware is relatively insignificant against a potential Total Cost of Printing that can be as much as 45% lower!
To explain, consider it this way: Epson’s DFX9000 is capable of printing 1,550 text characters (at 10cpi) each and every second of operation. CharisCo Printer Labs’ 5% coverage test page contains about 1,500 characters.
Allowing for a bit of leeway, this means that the DFX9000 should be capable of printing one A4 page every second – i.e. 60ppm. If we allow a little additional time for paper feeding, etc., a realistic print speed might be in the order of 55ppm, the speed of the top-end A3 office laser printers, faster than almost any A4 printer on the market and equivalent to many light production level laser printers.
Taking this argument a stage further, we need to bear in mind that a dot matrix printer can print on multi-part forms paper. The DFX9000 will print up to nine copies of the original in one go (1 + 9) – ten in all.
This means that the effective print speed is not 60ppm but 600ppm – not a bad speed. The trouble is that separating and collating the pages would need to be done by hand rather than by an automatic paper finisher – a significant cost – making that solution suitable only for certain applications.
So, having established that print speed is not an issue detrimental to the dot matrix technology, how about the Total Cost of Printing?
Ribbons for the DFX9000 are described as ‘long life’, and are rated at 15 million characters. Again equating that with the 5% test page of about 1,500 characters, we end up with a page yield of 10,000 pages per cartridge at 5% coverage. Priced at £16.47, this gives us a nominal CPP of just 0.165 pence per page.
On its own, this is about one tenth of the typical cost of pages printed on many personal laser printers in the 10-26ppm range. Compared to 50ppm laser printers, it is in the order of one-third to one-quarter of the cost of pages from an A3 model and as little as one-fifth of the cost of pages from an A4 model.
Looking at the costing over a three-year life, printing 15,000 pages per month, we end up with a long term CPP of about 0.68 pence compared with a typical CPP of around 1.0 to 1.2 pence for 50ppm printers. Only Kyocera Mita laser printers challenge, but do not undercut, Epson’s dot matrix printers for Total Cost of Printing.
Suppose we now consider the cost implications of multi-part forms printing!
True, the paper cost increases but the cost of printing each copy is divided by the number of copies achieved. In other words, to print the maximum number of copies on the DFX9000, 10-part forms, the nominal CPP falls to just 0.0165 pence and the long term cost falls to 0.068 pence! No laser printer can even begin to challenge this cost.
So, for non customer facing hard copy applications where multiple copies are required, the dot matrix printer has plenty to offer and companies should not forget that dot matrix printers exist, purchasing laser printers just because it is the dominant technology.
If it is maintaining a healthy bottom line that is paramount, bear in mind that under the circumstances used above to calculate the long-term CPP, the DFX9000 would cost around £3,700 to run while a typical laser printer would cost in the order of
£6,000 and could cost as much as £6,700.
Therefore, even if cut sheet paper is used in a printer like the DFX9000, at a printing CPP of 0.68 pence per page, companies will save money in the long-term but, where multi-part stationery is appropriate, savings could be huge.
Of course, laser printers, and colour lasers in particular, are essential to many areas of business. Quite rightly, no company would entertain the thought of sending mission critical, image-building or marketing mail to customers, or of trying to present graphics representing complex data, in dot matrix form. But, would we seriously worry if our bank statements came to us from a dot matrix machine? At a personal level, I felt that my bank statements became less attractive and more difficult to read when the bank made the transition to laser production. Even now, I would prefer the bank to revert to the original format.
~End~
