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4.142. How do I price plastic card printing in EstiMate?

My setup is as follows:

Plastic cards cost .08 each.
1 color red green blue ribbon costs .03 per impression and roll is 1000 impressions.
Black is .02 per impression and roll is 1500 impressions.
4 color is .19 and roll is 350 impressions.
design time is standard rate for any design.

Pricing Plastic Card Printing

This Tutorial assumes the following:

You will be using the Digital Printing (Thermal) plugin in EstiMate.
You are printing on cards that are standard credit card size of 2-1/8 X 3-3/8 inches in size or 2.125 X 3.375.

Overview:

There are three preliminary processes you will need to do in order to price plastic card printing.

1. Enter the plastic card print media into EstiMate?s print media database.
2. Create a machine definition so EstiMate will base production times using your printers specifications.
3. Enter the ribbons into the foils database.

Detailed instructions (print media entry):

1. Click Edit Data Files > Ingredients > Digital Print Media. Click the New button.
2. Enter in the plastic card stock. Input a description, enter the height and width of the card, your cost and desired markup. In the example above you would enter 2.125 in the height column and 3.375 in the width column. The cost would be .08.
3. Check the ?automatically enter width and height information on estimates? checkbox and click the green OK checkmark to save.

Detailed instructions (machine definition):

1. Click Edit Data Files > Thermal Machines > New.
2. Input the name of the machine and the maximum usable material width. Click the plus sign to add dpi ranges and print speeds (Consult your printers specifications for this information). Click the green OK checkmark to save.

Detailed instructions (ribbon entry):

1. Click Edit Data Files > Ingredients > Foils/Ribbons/Inks > New.
2. Enter a description for the RGB ribbon and choose a supplier (if desired).
3. Input the height and width. In the height field enter the height of the card 2.125 inches. 2.125 X 1000 impressions = 2,125? inch long ribbon, so input the width as 2,125 inches. Input your cost. The cost stated above is .03 per 1000 impressions so .03 X 1000 is $30.00. Enter 30.00 in the cost field and your desired markup.
4. Input the minimum square inches to print as 2.125.
5. If the printer prints all three colors at once then input the number of passes as 1. If your printer prints each color as a separate pass then input the number of passes as 3. Click the green OK checkmark to save the entry.

Black Ribbon:

Repeat steps 1 - 5 above. In step 3 substitute the following dimensions Height 2.125in. Width 3188in. Number of passes should be 1.

4 ? Color Ribbon:

Repeat Steps 1-5 above.

In step 3 substitute the following dimensions Height 2.125in. Width 744in. Cost $66.50.

Pricing instructions:

1. Click New Estimate > Add item > Thermal Prints or ?Digital Printing? in some versions.
2. Select the plastic card stock from the print media dropdown.
3. Input the quantity, select the machine type, choose your ribbon.
4. Adjust subjectives if necessary, press calculate total and click the green OK checkmark to add the item to the quote.

Congratulations! You have just priced plastic card printing with EstiMate! In the future you can skip the preliminary steps as the ingredients will automatically be entered into the database.