Canon Arizona: track ink consumption and print costs

Canon Arizona ink consumption is about more than CMYK. The Arizona is a UV flatbed printer, often running white and varnish as well, and those extra channels make costing hard. The machine knows its consumption, but a solid quote needs those numbers stored for good. Printometer is built to be vendor neutral. The Arizona is not connected yet, but the connection is in preparation.

What the Canon Arizona knows about its costs - and what disappears

The Arizona is a UV flatbed series, among other things with FLXflow technology. It prints with UV ink, often adding white and varnish. Each job carries the ink used, the print mode and the printed area. These are the values you need to derive real cost per job.

This data runs through the machine controller or the connected workflow. It does not stay available forever, though. Without a durable copy, the history is gone later, and every square metre price stays a guess. White and varnish in particular push costs up when nobody tracks them separately.

Capturing Canon Arizona ink consumption automatically (planned)

This route is not live yet, it is in preparation. Here is how it will work. A small program on site, the collector, picks up the Arizona consumption data on a fixed schedule. It reads from the machine controller or the connected workflow, wherever the data is cleanly available.

The values then flow into a cloud hosted in the EU and stay there for good. Fleeting data in the machine becomes a complete history you can still analyse months later. If you want to connect the Arizona as soon as it is ready, join the waiting list. We will get in touch once the route is in place.

From consumption to costing

Measured consumption is one half, prices are the other. In Printometer you enter the ink price per litre and the material price per square metre, each with a valid-from date. The analysis turns that into cost per job.

In the end you see solid figures instead of gut feeling. The real ink cost per square metre, the cost per order and the totals per material and period. A job with white and varnish comes out clearly more expensive than a plain flatbed job, and your quote can reflect that.

Other machines

Two machines are already connected and live. The Canon Colorado, a UV gel roll printer, and the Epson SureColor. The Arizona follows as a UV flatbed step by step. For an overview of the whole topic, see the guide Print costs in large format.