RMX Analytics
Mar 11, 2025
In our last post, we talked about finding the ink yield of a black cartridge in a DesignJet XL 3800. While there was some mystery about the exact numbers, it was still pretty clear that this cartridge had a very good yield.
Out of around 500mL, 9mL were used for maintenance jobs (printhead cleaning, etc) and the rest was used for printing. That’s less than 2% of the black ink cartridge going to cleaning. If you factor in the 4% of the ink remaining in the cartridge that the customer threw in the trash (which we’ll get more into another time), we’re still only around 5-6% “waste.”
Pretty good, right? But the thing is, these printers have four cartridges, and the story on the other three isn’t as rosy.
The printer we looked at last time was placed at a construction company that prints about 8,000 square feet a month – 90% of this printing is technical drawings with small amounts of spot color. They do print color maps, and even full color posters on this printer, but the bulk of the printing is sparse line drawings, which primarily use black ink.
While this printer is generally used every day, the color nozzles on the printhead need a lot more cleaning because they see less use. We found that while less than 2% of the black ink was used for cleaning cycles, the other three cartridges used about 15% of their ink for cleaning.
So, let’s just break this down using the MSRP for the cartridges in this printer. (I know you pay less than this but it is a good starting point.)
HP 768 500mL cartridges are $241. On a black cartridge, $4.81 is going to maintenance, but for the three color cartridges, $36.51 of every cartridge goes to maintenance.
The Good News: Your customers likely use a lot more black cartridges. We did the math and on printers similar to the XL 3800 at this construction company, it is pretty common to have 4 black ink cartridges replaced for each set of color cartridges.
But, when you’re thinking about cartridge yield, even though the black and color cartridges have the same cost, keep in mind that your yield is much better on black.