Chances are your office has a good printer that can manage even large jobs on occasion, and which produces what you think are high-quality color prints. Such printers are more affordable than ever before, so it's not unusual to have a good color printer in an office and even available for each worker personally. However, this doesn't mean you should rely on your office printer for every print job you have. Note when it's good to send out print jobs to a professional printing company rather than using your own machines, and why this is the best choice for these jobs.

Printing on photo paper or cardstock

Photo paper is usually smoother than standard office paper, which is why it's good to have a professional print your work when you need it done on photo paper. The ink you have in your printer at the office is more likely to smear on smooth paper, and that smooth surface is not always going to get caught by the rollers in the machine. In turn, it may slide around, not be fed through, or otherwise be prone to causing jams. Not only can this slow down your print job but it can also mean wear and tear on the machine as it tries to work with paper jammed inside.

Cardstock offers the same challenges; this is thick paper that is also more likely to get jammed in your office machine. Those rollers and the slots and areas inside the machine where the paper is fed through are meant to work with very thin paper, so cardstock can easily jam in any area and cause that added wear and tear on the rollers and feeders.

Larger volumes of printing

Even if you have the time to print out a large volume, you may want to send out this job anyway. This is because an office printer is typically not designed to handle a large volume at once. If the machine works continuously without a break for many minutes or hours, it may easily overheat. This can cause damage to the sprayers and other areas that feed out the ink, and damage to the parts that keep the machine running.

You may not realize that you're damaging your office printer because it may not shut down right then, but like driving a car continuously when it's overheating, this added wear and tear can mean needed repairs sooner rather than later. Overall, it can be better to pay to have large jobs printed by a commercial printer, such as Accent Print & Copy, to preserve your own office machines.