How many milliter of ink for an A4 print?

Could some one please let me know how much milliter of ink (all colours put

together)gets consumed while printing a coloured photograph - almost edge to

edge, though not bleed - on an A4 size inkjet paper using the premium glossy

paper / Best photo print selection? The printer in this case would be a 6

colour A4 photo printer - Epson R230 or similar.

it is probably measured in picoliters not milliliters.

If you look into the specs for the R800 (as an example) ...

 

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&infoType=Specs&oid=37472319&category=Products

 

... you find that the dropsize is 1.5 picoliter (one single drop)

 

... and that the printer can print 5760 x 1440 dpi

 

A4 is about 8'' * 12''

 

8 * 12 * 5760 * 1440 * 1.5 pictoliter = 1.2 ml

 

So I assume a good giuess is about 1ml per A4 print.

With our 1994 RIP box server that uses NT3.51; its lists the mL for each print ripped; with a total; and what each C,M,Y,K cartridge is going to use. Its just a calculated, in the ballpark swag of a guess. Thus one 24x36" print might use 3ml; another 8, another 5; another 13, another with just some text 1.5ml. In commerical printing one buys ink in bulk; 1/2, 1, 2 liters and runs controlled tests to check how much ink is used. Yellow tends to be used more than the other ink sets. Here we measure millaliters per square foot of print; since big jobs are priced by the square footage. Software estimates in rips are often rough estimates, often abit wrong. Some keep track of whats left in a cartridge or bulk ink tank but still subtract even if one scrubs/deletes a job. Most folks dont print 100% full black images.:) Marketers being abit slimmy often spec with 10% coverage; like the whole world is printing spead sheets; not photos. Here I buy many thousands of dollars on ink a year; its all packaged in ml and liters thus we use ml as the unit for each print; since its the practical unit to use. Picoliters might be good for postage stamp printing.

I think Epson specs at 5% coverage per channel, which is a little high-key. Also the dots obviously aren't elongate rectangles so the resolution of 5760x1440 is no indication of actual droplet consumption. I'd do the math with 1440x1440*8*12*.15(15% coverage per channel)*6(channels)*1.5(pl)= ~.24 ml. Really though these are total SWAG's and Epson gives their cartridge figures in coverage pages (or atl elast they used to) rather than ink volume so it's a useless figure even if it WAS accurate.

 

Here's my math: old figures tended to say about 450-550 pages at 5% coverage per channel. We'll split the difference and say 500 coverage pages at 5%.

 

500 * .05 / .15 / 2 (I'm guessing twice as much ink on photo paper as on plain) = 75 prints per cartridge set or about $1 per page in ink depending on where you get it (assuming $15 average per cart and 6 carts). It's a different kind of SWAG but I think it might not be too far off and it's definately useful.

With the amount of money I spend on ink for my i9900 you would think the ink came out of a garden hose.

Thanx Rainer! Your calculation is quite convincing. I will go by the same.