Ways to print bound manuals?

[dswo]

While I was absent from my flight sim rig -- a period of about three weeks -- I resolved to spend more time with two aircraft: the Hughes Racer (Aerosoft) and the C-130 (CaptainSim). Last night I looked at the C-130 manuals, which total around 250 pages, and wondered how expensive it would be to get them printed and bound.

FedEx Kinko's will do it, in black and white with double-sided printing and spiral binding, for about US$26. You upload the PDFs on their website and pick up the printed version at your local FedEx Kinko's store. Again, that's for about 250 pages.

How much would it cost to print that on my Brother laser printer? Estimating toner, drum, and paper costs at 4 cents per page, it would be US$10, unbound, $7.50 if I used manual duplex printing.

What other printing and binding services are there?

[TeaSea]

While I was absent from my flight sim rig -- a period of about three weeks -- I resolved to spend more time with two aircraft: the Hughes Racer (Aerosoft) and the C-130 (CaptainSim). Last night I looked at the C-130 manuals, which total around 250 pages, and wondered how expensive it would be to get them printed and bound.

FedEx Kinko's will do it, in black and white with double-sided printing and spiral binding, for about US$26. You upload the PDFs on their website and pick up the printed version at your local FedEx Kinko's store. Again, that's for about 250 pages.

How much would it cost to print that on my Brother laser printer? Estimating toner, drum, and paper costs at 4 cents per page, it would be US$10, unbound, $7.50 if I used manual duplex printing.

What other printing and binding services are there?

I think you will find Kinko's to be quite competitive. Unless you have the correct binding equipment and supplies, you will never be able to duplicate their efforts. You could do the printing and bring in the documents for their binding, but I believe you will find little savings and it will be a big pain in the a**. UPS also does printing and binding services, and they are located just about everywhere so you could contact them for an estimate. You might want to check online and see if someone wants to go in with you....some of these models are getting complex enough that you need a manual(isn't it great!). For a popular model I'm sure more than one individual might want to plunk down a little bit and the cost of shipping. The bound documents generally become cheaper the more that are made (this may not be true getting smaller quantities -- but it's worth asking).

I'm fortunate in that I have access to a printing and binder service through my work and can use the equipment and cast off's when I want to build a book. I'm like you in that I like a handy copy.

[hews500d]

I've used Mimeo.com for printing the PMDG J41 manual. They seem to beat fedex on price just a little bit, plus when I had this one printed, they were doing a promotion for first time customers which made it an even better deal.

Darrell

[AndyE1976]

I hadn't really thought about using an online service to print the manuals, but that's a really good idea. I miss the days when you'd buy a sim, open the box and find a properly bound book (remember the original Falcon 3.0/4.0 manual?).

I understand why publishers don't include the bound books these days as it's obviously a lot more profitable to just put a PDF on a disk, but perhaps it would be a good idea for them to team up with somewhere like FedEx Kinko's or an independent printing house so that those of us that would like a printed copy can get one at a discounted price.

I've booked a week off work to spend some decent time learning the PMDG 747 and CS 757 among others, so I may have to look into printing some manuals.

[TeaSea]

I've used Mimeo.com for printing the PMDG J41 manual. They seem to beat fedex on price just a little bit, plus when I had this one printed, they were doing a promotion for first time customers which made it an even better deal.

Darrell

That's an excellent suggestion. Someone else I had run into had mentioned them and I had totally forgotten about their services.