DIY Edible Printing

Reconditioned is not a good idea.  But ANY printer that will accept the edible ink cartridges will do.  I bought a couple over the years at my local office supplies store for cheap.

In the long run, it is not the printer but the ink and paper which will be your biggest expense. In the USA, edible ink friendly  printers are relatively inexpensive and food safe - buy a new one.

Brand new printers on ebay.co.uk for 15 pounds, and you can then sell off the regular ink cartridges.  FYI the edible inks only come in black-cyan-magenta-yellow so you are NOT looking for a higher quality photo printer with 6 or 8 cartridges.

Buy one set of refillable edible cartridges, and edible ink in bottles of at least 100mL.  Only buy the "gold" quality as lower quality ink will cause more waste of edible sheets.  Overseas shipping of the highest quality may be economical in the long run.

Finally you can sell just printed edible sheets to other bakers.  Good supplementary source of revenue.   

Reconditioned printers are not an option because they had the non-edible ink run through them. It cannot ever be all cleaned out.

We pay tax here too (for our national healthcare) but the printers run half of what you were quoted.  The four-colour are low end and ebay is as good a source as any. You can find any 4-colour printer compatible with Mac and then buy empty refillable cartridges for it on ebay.

For brands of edible ink, look at www.goldaskitchen.com or www.icingimages.com for information.  

I don't know if there is a reputable UK brand of edible ink. Read the reviews if you find any online listings.  You are looking for "ultrafiltered".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kakie 

so to get a good quality print I should look for a printer that holds more than 4 inks and ultra filtered ink?

 

 

No, sorry, you must look ONLY for printers that use four inks.

They will print photos very well for cakes because the sugar sheets impose some limitation.

But there are ONLY four edible ink colors.

I got a Canon MG5150 from these guys in Germany: http://zuckerpapier24.de/ I also got bottles of their edible ink to refill the cartridges. This printer has 5 cartridges but there are 2 black ones (the others are yellow, cyan, magenta). They are pretty fast to ship, I also get my paper from there. On the top right of the page is the button to change the language to English. Hope that helps!
 

With various brands of inkjet printers, I know that it suffices to print one sheet per week to keep the heads clean without wasting ink on the "head clean" cycle.

If you print that much less, then you would be better off paying somebody else for that one sheet a month.

Or else set up to print edible sheets for other people--you only need to print 3 sheets per month for $$$ to keep the printer in fine condition.

The refillable cartridges can also be refilled halfway. 

The only sure ways to completely remove all traces of non-edible ink, without replacing enough parts to cost more than a completely new printer, would also turn the printer into a large paperweight.

Which is to say that the first rule of edible printing is that the printer designated for that purpose is never to be used with any other kind of ink. And the second rule of edible printing is that the printer designated for that purpose is never to be used with any other kind of ink.

No picture on a cake is worth making anybody even a little bit sick (q.v., the Disco Dust thread).

(And since I [1] don't allow inkjet printers in the house, and [2] use maybe 3-4 sheets of edible images per year, at most, and generally gang the images to make the best use of the media, I just drop $9-10 at the local cake supply when I need one made up.)

I print about as often as you and I just order my sheets individually, as needed. There are quite a few other bakers selling individual sheets online, or local cake stores sometimes do it too. It's easy and you can just add the cost of the printed sheet to your cake quote. 

I would suggest that you surf the internet for suppliers of the edible ink first and they will give you the names of the printers that they are compatible with.  You can then find the printer that you can afford knowing that you can buy the colour.  Also you must have a dedicated printer, which means that it can only be used for the one purpose ie. solely for edible colour or solely for normal inks.  You can never interchange as the chemicals in the normal printing inks can cause sickness or allergic reactions.  I agree with some of the other replies that if you are only printing 1 per month it makes them very expensive and will be a few years before you see any return on your investment.