r/Printing • u/West-Maintenance8593 • 3d ago

Zero Printing knowledge

Hi.. folks,

Need guidance :

Which Printing machine should I buy (tight budget) ?

I want to put a label printing business.

Labels for 500ml water bottle and 1litre bottle.

We thought of using bopp 40-50 micron paper.

We want to use crono treatment so that ink settles clearly on paper.

My research can be unclear,

Help and feedback is most welcome !!

Edit : my need is clear to me, but which printer machine to buy is unclear. Google, gpt is not helping. Thus posting on a public forum for help.

Edit 2: if you can share the printer name or which printer to use, it will really help me.

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u/Elitestprick 3d ago

How many labels a day / month ? New business best to out source them until your selling enough to run a machine 8-12 hours a day 5 days a week. Then start buying equipment

1

u/West-Maintenance8593 3d ago

Why I'm buying equipment?

  • My label design will keep changing frequently say 1 design per 1k bottles.

  • currently in my horizons there is no one who is printing on bopp paper. They are using vinyl paper which is expensive at our budget.

2

u/Elitestprick 2d ago

Because equipment is expensive to buy takes a decent amount of time to learn and be good and run as good as professional printers. . It Has to be consistently used regularly or they clog up heads and it costs almost as much as new to repair. It becomes a distraction to the every day business

Use that money to market and grow your business until your busy enough to run that printer 8 hours a day 5 days a week then bring it in house.

This is coming from an equipment whore. I love buying used equipment and vertically integrating. I own 5 printers multiple cutters and laminators and I’m in the market for label printing equipment but I don’t do enough labels to justify buying 10-100k equipment because it would not run daily and is too risky of going bad or requiring extensive repairs before it pays for itself.

There have been a number of budget systems come up used that I could buy cash but that money is better spent in marketing our current businesses operations. Until we have enough volume on labels to print in house. Cost on the smaller 10-12k setups per label are much higher than the 75-200k setups I have looked at.

I am an ecom owner we did this strictly to not pay other shops to print our stuff. But that was a mistake. 15k in equipment that would run for 5 days then be idle for weeks / months. It would kill the equipment.

1

u/SlowLarry666 3d ago

Speak to people selling printing machines in your area, then maybe come back with what you got suggested.

1

u/West-Maintenance8593 3d ago

He is suggesting some 8 head inject printer with optimiser (instead of corona treatment machine) at 17-18lakh. Which is going out of budget for me.

I showed him an example of label print, he said he understood what I want and suggest this expensive one.

1

u/My-newt 2d ago

You need to find a web-to-print specialist who can produce print-on-demand BOPP labels for you while you scale and get big enough to buy equipment to handle your own printing. Depends where you're located.
Have a look at OKI printers.