Tips for Buying Used Printing Equipment
There are many aspects that we need to take into consideration when choosing to buy used printing equipment, and most of them have to do with how well we are able to assess our situation, the reasons for buying the equipment, and how well we are able to choose between the printing equipment that is out on the market.
To be sure, buying more equipment is a big step that needs to be carefully considered because making mistakes can mean losing a lot of time and money, and with the cost of these machines, that is something which we can’t let happen.
Basically, when buying used printing equipment we have two choices: manual or automated. Manually operating equipment is much easier to assess and handle, and that is why when choosing to buy this type of equipment, especially if we already own similarly operated machines, we won’t encounter many difficulties. If we’re just starting out and we think we won’t be able to handle everything by ourselves, we can easily find someone that will be able to help us.
A more complex situation arises in the case in which we want to buy automatic machines. This is mostly due to the fact that these highly advanced machines are more complex, and as such, are much harder to troubleshoot and repair in case something goes wrong. But, with all things considered, the difference in performance between manual and automatic is staggering, so much so that choosing to go from manual to automatic may just be the boost that our company needs.
A proper assessment of our situation, in the case in which we would choose to go automatic from manual, would imply seeing if we would be able to use the new equipment at full capacity. This doesn’t just mean that we need to find out whether we have enough work so that the equipment will be used more than not, but it also means that we need to know how to use it, or have somebody that has had prior experience with that type of automatic machine.
Most of the times it’s recommended to get a new machine that is easier to troubleshoot and repair, if we are just starting out with using automatic printing equipment, so that we are able to steadily learn more about them, than to risk having to pay for the visits of a trained technician to repair our machine every time it stops working, sometimes because of easily solvable problems.
When buying used printing equipment, as with when buying anything else, we need to make sure that the person that is selling it can legally do so. Ideally, there will be no problems of this sort and we can continue with a full inspection of the printing equipment. First and foremost, we need to see the machine’s service record history.
This should tell us, if the machine hasn’t been tampered with, what changes were made to it, specifically, what components were replaced. What we need to avoid are machines that have had electrical or registration problems, because they can be very difficult to work with, and machines that have had multiple replacements of the master controller, output controller or PLC. After this we can inspect the actual machine, in which case it’s ideal if we can see the machine operate. Getting the advice of an experienced technician is a must before any purchase.
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