We know – the deal looks too good to be true: a second user UV flatbed printer for less than £20 thousand. Suddenly flatbed printing seems affordable. We get asked about this all the time. Is it a sensible way of saving money or should it be a case of buyer beware? We’ve found that when you start to dig a little deeper, these sorts of deals are not always the bargains they might appear on the surface.

On closer inspection…
One of the main issues to be aware of, if you’re thinking about buying a used flatbed printer, is that most of these transactions take place between users, rather than coming via a reseller. This means that you’ll be buying a printer that has no warranty, and you’ll have no sort of comeback if you discover, at some point down the line, that the printer is faulty.

Furthermore, if you buy directly from another printer, there is no way of knowing how well the machine has been maintained and serviced during its lifetime. You might be lucky and buy from the proverbial one careful owner, but some printers that are resold have been used and abused for years – and this might be one of the reasons that the owner is keen to move it on. But how would you know?

A cheap printer might sound like a great idea. But do the math’s carefully. With printheads on these sorts of machines costing upwards of £8 thousand, buying a machine that’s an unknown quantity could be a big and expensive mistake. You might just be buying somebody else’s problems.

There’s one other thing to take into consideration if you’re going to buy a printer from another user. How will it be transported from their printshop to yours? Even the most robust printers demand careful handling in transit, and approved printer dealers have the knowledge and experience to move printers without causing damage to them. What if your new beauty arrives off the back of a truck with a fault because it got knocked about on the journey. Who’s going to pick up the costs of the repair? The chances are it will be you.

Not such a bargain
In other words, though the price may seem attractive at first glance, when you buy a second-hand printer from another user, you could be buying a whole heap of trouble with it. In the long run, the costs may work out higher than if you’d purchased a new printer from a reputable dealer. Once again, it’s time to do the maths. Work out the volume of direct-to-substrate printing you need. Does it really justify investing in a flatbed printer, or would it be better so stick to outsourcing and/or mounting SAV to board?

The safer option
If you’re not quite sure about how things add up, come and talk with one of SEDO’s print experts. We can suggest a selection of UV LED printers to suit different budgets and you’ll be able to see the cost of operation using our ROI calculator. We can also arrange finance for you, and we can look at spreading your risk over five years with a leasing agreement. Your new machine will come with a warranty and by leasing it, the money that would go to another user if you bought second hand will stay in your business.

When you look at it like that, it’s easy to see that buying a used printer might not be the deal it’s cracked up to be, so come and talk to SEDO about the most cost-effective way of achieving the print capacity you need.