swissQprint: track ink consumption and print costs

swissQprint ink consumption comes from a UV flatbed printer, and the machine knows exactly what passes through its heads. UV ink, often white and varnish on top, all of it is captured by the machine controller. For pricing, this is the right source. Without saved consumption data, every square metre price stays a guess. Printometer is preparing the swissQprint connection so these values become real cost per print job.

What the swissQprint knows about its costs - and what disappears

A swissQprint from the Nyala, Impala or Karibu series handles a lot of consumption data per job. The UV ink used per channel, the share of white and varnish, the printed area and the material. These are exactly the values that separate a solid calculation from a rough average.

The catch is availability over time. Job and consumption data run through the machine controller, but they are not meant to serve as a lasting cost history. If you do not save them regularly, you lose the link between a job and its consumption. With white and varnish in particular, which cost real money, you then miss the basis for a clean price later on.

Track swissQprint ink consumption automatically

For the swissQprint, the connection is in preparation and not live yet. The plan is the same route that already works for other machines. A small program in your shop, the collector, picks up the consumption data per machine on a fixed schedule, with no manual work at the printer.

The values are meant to gather in a cloud hosted in the EU and stay there for good, with no expiry date. Data from the machine controller becomes a complete history you can still analyse months later. If you run a swissQprint, join the waiting list. We will reach out as soon as the connection is ready, and we set the order by real demand.

From consumption to costing

Measured consumption is one half, the 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. From this the analysis works out the cost per job, per material and per machine.

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 period. A motif with heavy coverage, a lot of white or varnish becomes visibly more expensive than a plain UV job, and your quote can reflect that. This principle already works for the machines that are live, and the swissQprint slots in right here.

Other machines

Live today are the Canon Colorado and the Epson SureColor, both connected through each machine's own consumption data. The swissQprint follows, and more models arrive step by step. For the full picture, see the guide on print costs in large format.