Question by girl: what type of printer do i need to start a printing company ?
im thinking to start a small printing business but i dont know what printers to use or size. any ideas guys? please help and i will rate! 
thanks
Best answer:
Answer by bon-gart
For the volume of printing, get yourself a LASER COPIER.
Modern laser copiers can be hooked up to computers (or come with color pass units) to be used as printers. Since you are wanting to do this professionally, a copier can handle a far greater volume of prints, compared to a printer.
However, if you know you are going to be dealing with a small volume of prints, then get a laser printer. It will cost more initially, but the toner cartridges will last longer than ink.. so it costs less per print over time. You also get permanent printing (you can’t get ink jet prints wet.. they run). You can also print on a wider range of materials.
Small volume, laser printer. Large volume, laser copier.
What do you think? Answer below!
So let me get this straight…
You are thinking about starting a small business that you know absolutely nothing about?
No offense, but maybe you should stick to something you know. There is no substitute for experience.
That said, if you were to start a small printing company you would need SEVERAL wide format printers and they start in the $ 2000 range.
The Canon imagePROGRAF iPF610 Large Format Printer is a good one.
Depends how ambitious you are. A good A4 or A3 laser printer mono or colour would get you started. If you want to go big paper wise, it gets very expensive indeed. Many thousands of pounds for machines that print banners, vinyls etc. There are machines on ebay that will give you an insight into costs. Be cautious. It is best to build up a client base first and be forced to invest in larger kit, than splash out and go bust due to lack of cash flow.
Depends largely what you intend to print. The field is so large and the scope so broad whatever was suggested here would probably be not right for whatever you eventually do. Books, Magazines, coffee jar labels, Teeshirts, Newspapers, Adware, and so on, all would require a different type of printer, inks, materials, paper and so on
It depends if you want to do bills, invoices which can run you to 10 grand on a used printer.
You will need a good laser printer to support extensive copying and that is another 3 grand; a good color printer is another 7 grand. All these prices are the minimum.
You need 50 grand to start a decent printing company and you are not even going overboard.
Cost of paper, ink, toners etc… have to be calculated in your cost and you have to know what it cost you to put the key in the door before even selling anything.
Go for it. iam not discouraging you since i started at the botton to work myself to the top. invest 15 grand and build up solowly. Even a good Deskjet canprint nice looking business card to start off and i do recommend the wide carriage riht off the bat.
Cheaper to run and more cost efficient.
Good Luck
You will need to be more specific about what you will be printing or this is unanswerable and if I could suggest that you try to list all the things you will consider printing like posters, business cards, letters ETC that will scale down the vast amount of printer options that there are and help you find the most suitable printer. As other have said, if you are going to say, print A3 size advertising posters then you will need a wide format printer as your first point to start at. Within wide format printer there are a wide range of wide format printers that do a wide variety of jobs. To have a wide format printer if you print nothing bigger than A4 would be a waste of money and you would better off paying the amount you would for the wide format to buy a better A4 one that would allow you to print a wider range of items thus allowing you more opportunity to gain business from a wide source of clients.
If you will print say, on shirts or mugs then you will need a different printer. It s a bit like saying I want to have a meal what ingredients do I need when we have no idea what meal you want to cook. This is not criticism of you but if you could perhaps give us a better idea of what you are considering printing we will be able to help you better.