Print Farm & Production
Practical capacity and 85%
Farms do not print 100% of every available hour. Print Farm Capacity defaults to 85% practical utilization so there is room for setup, failed prints, and downtime. You can change that percent.
Theoretical hours are “if every selected printer ran all of its available time.” Practical hours are a fraction of that — 85% unless you set another target. Remaining practical is what is left after committed work.
Committed workload can come from jobs already in Multiple Printer Manager. Offline printers add 0 hours and cannot be selected as if they were running. The farm roster is not edited here.
Status lines such as capacity available vs above practical target are about that remaining room, not about whether you should take a customer’s money.
What-if capacity is a side estimate. It does not overwrite the main scenario.
Use this tool
Quick tip
Leave 85% until you have a better number from real weeks of printing. Zero slack only looks good on paper.