‘Equipment’ that we finance at Aussie Equipment Finance doesn’t have to be the heavy loading equipment we have pictured on our home page, or that we covered in our last article (JCB and Caterpillar – kings of construction equipment). It could equally be machinery, or even office equipment, maybe even the humble office printer.
Talking of office printers, it’s interesting to think of how over the past ten years or so office printers have come down in price so much (whilst adding more and more features and improving print quality) that it now costs more to buy the ink than it does to buy the printer.
In another life I used to work in a ‘quick print’ type outlet in London, where our equipment was essentially a collection of photocopiers. But these were no ordinary photocopiers. A simple colour photocopier at the time could produce a colour A4 page in about a minute. Our copiers, which cost upwards of $30,000 each, were the length of a small car and could churn out A4 colour copies at a rate of 30 per minute (this was a model called a Xerox DC30). Many of our customers were admin staff who had been given an 80 page powerpoint presentation and asked to ‘run off 30 copies for me by tomorrow morning’. Rather than stay in the office all night,* they’d come over to us and we’d get it done in double quick time.
Most office managers just look for the right model to get the job done, but what if money was no object and you just wanted the smartest, most expensive printer available? Well, in that case, you’d probably have to see if you could get your hands on the Golden HP LaserJet 1160 (pictured).
Back in 2006, HP had reached a milestone in Middle East markets and had hit $4 million in sales. To celebrate they chose one of their best selling models and added gold and silver components and finish. The 24 carat gold printer worked just like the ordinary model, but came with a $20,000 price tag. It was unveiled at the Gitex IT exhibition and was auctioned for charity.
But, looking at advances in technology in the printing world in general, it could be that a lot of conventional manufacturing equipment will be replaced by ‘printers’ in the future. The term 3D printing embraces machines that are in existence today that can ‘print’ small (and increasingly larger) components. According to a recent report on the industry from the US, 3D printers have been used for a while to print component parts for the automotive and aerospace industries, and will soon be producing consumer products, and eventually clothing, food, and living tissue.
The report states that the printing of bones and soft tissue is already possible, with complete kidneys and hearts further into the future, but ‘certain to happen’. Six million dollar man anyone?
When you want to get your first 3D printer, give us a call to arrange the equipment finance!
*this is just literary licence of course – they’d never do it – 2,400 A4 pages at one page a minute is 40 hours. Maybe if they had access to more than one printer… ; The DC30 would do it in 1hr 20mins