Epson SureColor: track ink consumption and print costs

Epson SureColor ink consumption is measured very precisely, right down to the individual colour channel. The printer itself only remembers the last few jobs, though, and after that the value is gone. For pricing, that is not enough. Without a secured record, every price per square metre stays a guess. Printometer secures this data for good and turns it into real costs per print job.

What the Epson SureColor knows about its costs - and what disappears

The SureColor records the consumption of each ink per job, plus area and media. On the models with white, the white consumption comes in separately, as does the ink used for cleaning. These are exactly the values a reliable calculation needs.

The printer holds only a small number of job records. The full history lives in the Epson LFP Accounting Tool, the companion program on the RIP computer. It stores the measured consumption of all connected SureColor printers together with the media names. That is the right source for a lasting analysis.

Track Epson SureColor ink consumption automatically

Printometer is live in use here. The collector reads the LFP Accounting Tool database directly, with no manual export. The measured consumption per channel, the areas, and the media names are taken over and flow together in a cloud hosted in the EU.

There they stay for good, even once the printer has long overwritten its few job records. If the tool is ever not running, the consumption can be read over the network protocol instead. Fleeting values become a gap-free history.

From consumption to calculation

Alongside the measured consumption, you store the prices in Printometer. Ink price per litre, material price per square metre, each with a valid-from date. From that the analysis calculates the cost per job.

That way you see the real ink cost per square metre instead of a flat rate. An image with high coverage or with white becomes visibly more expensive than a simple job, and your quote can reflect that cleanly. One note in passing: if a colour appears without a stored price, Printometer would rather not report the ink cost at all than calculate it too low.

Other machines

Alongside the Epson SureColor, the Canon Colorado is connected live. More models follow step by step. For an overview of the whole topic, see the guide Print costs in large-format printing.