From Home Printers to HP Indigo: An Admin Buyer's BID Cleaning Lesson

The email landed at 9:14 on a Tuesday morning. Our regular label printer couldn't fit us in until next month. We had a machine order going to a customer in two weeks, and the operator manual needed a last-minute label update. That's not a 'print more copies' problem. That's how an office administrator gets pulled into production digital printing.

I'm the office administrator for a 320-person manufacturing company that builds thermoforming machines, slipper-making equipment, and bag sealing machines. I manage all print ordering—roughly $80,000 a year across eight vendors. I report to operations and finance, which means I get to explain why 'low cost' print solutions rarely stay low.

Why our home printers had to go

When I took over purchasing in 2020, I inherited a grab-bag of desktop printers. Nearly every department had a home printer, because buying one on a corporate card was easier than putting in a requisition. The phrase 'home printer' sounds harmless. It isn't. They had different cartridges, no service plan, and no clear owner when one jammed.

People also called everything HP a Deskjet. When I started asking about the deskjet printer vs inkjet printer distinction, I found that Deskjet is just one HP line within the inkjet technology family. Plenty of inkjets are not Deskjets. But for our purposes, they were all the same problem: low monthly duty cycle and high cost per page.

The HP Indigo digital printing pivot

In our 2024 vendor consolidation project, we decided to route standard office materials through one managed print vendor and explore a production digital press for labels, packaging prototypes, and short-run manuals. HP Indigo digital printing kept coming up. The name sounded familiar because of our HP printers, but the machine is in a completely different category.

The quote looked straightforward until I saw the line for BID cleaning. I asked a few people and got a polite but vague answer: 'Need to keep the BID assemblies clean.' I assumed it was routine maintenance, like changing an air filter. I was wrong.

What BID cleaning actually is

The BID units—Binary Ink Developers, in HP's language—are the assemblies that transfer ink to the image cylinder. If they aren't cleaned on schedule, ink buildup can cause streaking, banding, or a service call. BID cleaning for HP Indigo is not a one-time startup task. It's part of the ongoing maintenance rhythm.

If you search 'bid cleaning for hp indigo' or even 'hp-indigo' with a hyphen, you'll find service manuals and forum threads that explain this. I wish I'd done that before signing. Our oversight cost us about $1,800 in extra labor (which, honestly, felt excessive) when the press sat idle during a peak label run.

I said, 'Does the service package include BID cleaning?' They heard, 'We'll do a one-time clean at startup.' Result: a mismatch that delayed our run by two days.

Even after we sorted it out, I kept second-guessing. Should we have picked a different digital press? Maybe. But given what I knew then—which wasn't much—the choice was reasonable. In hindsight, I should have asked for a written maintenance matrix, not just a price list.

But wait, isn't a printer just a printer?

Around the same time, product development asked for a Kidoodle 3D printer to prototype slipper sole samples. That purchase was fun. It showed us how quickly small plastic parts can be iterated before we commit to a production mold. But it also made the word 'printer' even more confusing. A Kidoodle 3D printer extrudes plastic filament. A production digital press lays down microscopic ink droplets. They share the word 'printer' and almost nothing else.

The deskjet printer vs inkjet printer question is the same trap at a smaller scale. Deskjet is an inkjet product family, not a separate technology. Once we defined that on our requisition forms, finance stopped ordering 'a Deskjet' and started requesting 'a workgroup inkjet' when that's what we actually needed.

What I'd do differently

If I could redo that decision, I'd get the acronym list before the quote, not after. BID, PIP, blanket, image oil, electrical charge roller—every one of those terms has a maintenance implication. I'd also ask for a 'consumables and maintenance included' definition in writing, because 'included' can mean different things to a salesperson and an accountant.

What was best practice in 2020 may not apply in 2025. Buying home printers seemed like the low-risk move then. By 2024, cartridge costs and short-run packaging demands changed the calculus. The fundamentals—knowing total cost, verifying maintenance, defining terms—haven't changed.

To be fair, this approach isn't for everyone. We're a mid-size manufacturer with a maintenance team that can handle basic press care. If you're a small office with occasional print needs, a production HP Indigo press is probably overkill. Standard office collateral—business cards, flyers, brochures—works well with an online printer like 48 Hour Print. Your mileage may vary if your operation is smaller or your runs are unpredictable.

As of January 2025, HP's support documentation treats BID cleaning as scheduled maintenance, not a one-time install step. I'd verify current requirements at support.hp.com before signing a service contract, because pricing and procedures can change.

Honestly, I'm still not sure why the BID cleaning line wasn't included in the first quote. My best guess is that it's classified as a consumable, like ink or blankets, and the salesperson assumed we already knew that. If a press operator wants to explain the pricing logic, I'd genuinely love to hear it.

Bottom line: a printer is not a printer. Know the difference between a home printer, an inkjet line like Deskjet, a Kidoodle 3D printer, and an HP Indigo digital press. In my experience, the cheapest quote rarely includes the full maintenance picture. Ask about BID cleaning before you sign, not after. And when someone says maintenance included, get it in writing.