Digital Press Beefs Up Barnard’s Binding Options

Since installing a new Konica Minolta C7000 digital press in August, Alan Anderson, director of Mail and Print Services at New York City’s Barnard College, has had nothing but good things to say about the digital color press.

“The Konica Minolta C7000, along with our Konica Minolta PRO 1200 black-and-white press, allows us to produce any type of saddle-stitch booklet up to 200 pages on either machine, where previously, it could only be done on one black-and-white machine,” he says. “We can also produce five-page nested tri-fold documents coming right off of the machine, on both machines.”

The three-employee in-plant, situated right across Broadway from Columbia University, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, has had a long-standing affair with Konica Minolta equipment. What Anderson and his staff liked most about these machines over the past six years is their paper-handling flexibility, along with their ability to handle heavy stocks, even when duplexing. According to Anderson, the C7000 offers a much better registration and color consistency than its predecessor, the Konica Minolta C6500. While the addition of a humidifying unit may slow down the machine somewhat, he notes that the C7000 is now almost jam-free, even when running 300 gsm, 13x19˝ coated stock.

“The previous machine we were using didn’t have a saddle-stitch trimming finisher and had a small bookletmaker,” he recalls. “While it would produce up to 65 pages [per minute], we were not able to trim, so we would use that press for short-run booklets that didn’t require edge trimming.”

Anderson also notes that both the C6500 and C7000 presses have allowed the in-plant to bring more work in-house—jobs previously sent to outside printers. Some of the products it produces include 11x17˝ bleed posters, postcards (the press can gang eight-up on a 13x19˝ sheet), booklets, shorter-run folding jobs and variable data work.

To improve the quality of the folds on its digital color jobs, the in-plant also recently added a Morgana DigiFold Pro. Anderson says the foot-pedal operated EasyCrease Pro the in-plant previously used was fine for very small jobs, but larger creasing/folding jobs had to be outsourced. Now the in-plant will be able to provide faster turnaround and keep a closer eye on fold quality.

“My view is the Konica Minolta C7000, Konica Minolta Pro 1200 and DigiFold Pro should provide an almost ideal configuration for Barnard over the next five years,” Anderson says.

With plenty of printers located in New York City, what has helped the in-plant remain competitive is the diverse mix of clients it serves, including students and non-profit organizations. Bringing in this outside work has helped to boost the in-plant’s revenue considerably over the last three years—income from outside sources rose from $9,000 in FY2008 to almost $59,000 in FY2011.

To make the job submission process easier for its clients, the in-plant has revamped its Web site to offer a downloadable Acrobat fill-in order form. A button on the form places it as an attachment into an e-mail, to which the client can also attach the job file.

“What also makes us competitive is that our pricing is amongst the lowest in the area because we are not trying to turn a profit, and we only use the equipment that we need,” Anderson concludes. “Some of the students we serve have even abandoned other printers to let us produce those jobs, and we hope that this continues to be passed on from one generation of students to the next.”