Black-and-white Printers in a Four-color World

Monochrome printers provide cost, productivity and flexibility benefits that color printers can’t touch.

AS DEMANDS for color printing continue to increase, many wonder about the fate of black-and-white-only printers. Most industry experts say not only will they still be an integral part of a printing operation, they will include more features and improved workflow functions.

Paula Balik uses the analogy of a stove and microwave oven.

“If you’ve got a microwave now, should you get rid of your oven or does it specifically have applications that make your kitchen efficient?” poses Balik, worldwide product marketing manager for Kodak’s black-and-white printing systems. “That’s what black and white does with color; it’s very complementary technology.”

Based on trade shows she’s attended, Daria Hoffman, managing editor for Buyers Laboratory, which analyzes and reports on the imaging industry, predicts monochrome printing will continue to play a prevalent role in print’s future.

Many believe cost, productivity and flexibility are reasons why in-plants should consider adding black-and-white-only printers.

“Technology offers very high quality and the ability to automatically integrate color covers and additional color inserts at a fraction of the cost of a full-color document,” says Deb Cantabene, production monochrome product marketing manager for the Xerox Production Systems Group.

Consider cost per print and total cost of ownership, says Gary Coon, marketing director for Ricoh Printing Systems America.

“Although many new color printers have improved costs of operation for printing black-and-white-only jobs, it still may not be the best utilization of a color printer,” he says. “A printer limited to just printing can fit an application where copying/scanning may be seen as an unnecessary interruption to the printing process.”

Kodak’s Balik says cost is not the prime factor. In-plants—like their commercial counterparts—are more focused on being the print provider of choice for clients, she says. An in-plant needs to offer a quality quick turnaround on its core items, such as manuals, directories and training guides, Balik says.

“Digital black-and-white printing allows them to do that, especially when you get into variable data printing,” she adds. “That’s a key to in-plant success, because if someone can go outside the operation and get it faster or cheaper, they will.”

Drop in Interest?

Despite this, some note a slight drop in interest in black-and-white-only printers following the advent of combination color/monochrome printers.

Balik says while that’s rooted in an asset management perspective, in-plant managers should consider combination printers’ affordability and potential productivity trade-offs, noting print providers must optimize time, cost and quality.

Printers will still be interested in monochrome printers when their criteria for printing doesn’t support the added cost of color printing or the extra functionality of scanning, Ricoh’s Coon says.

“InfoTrends/CAP Ventures says in the production print market, color is the growth engine and continues to drive the U.S. market,” he says. “While the black-and-white market is shifting pages to color devices, it is still growing.”

Manufacturers’ black-and-white-only units are responding to market demands with such features as faster speeds and lower costs:

• Riso’s black-and-white printer-duplicators can produce up to 180 pages per minute (ppm) with machines that are on the lower end of the market cost scale.

• Kodak’s Digimaster print systems—including its E series—aim to marry enhanced speed with a range of options in image quality.

• Ricoh’s DDP and EMP printers boast very high duty cycles, the ability to run a variety of media without engine speed degradation, customer-changeable consumables, spot color at no extra charge, and server clustering for workload balancing.

• Xerox printers aim for workflow integration centered on productivity, efficiency and image quality.

Enhancing Workflow

Workflow enhancement has become as important as features. Cantabene says Xerox monochrome digital units can read and write to CD, deliver multiple inserts (including covers) and have multiple finishing options. They are integrated with workflow components to enhance productivity through automated document compilation, document accessibility via the Web and integration with offset printing work processes.

Coon adds that today’s black-and-white printers support direct printing of PDFs and TIFFs, MICR printing, finishing, stacking, electronic forms, remote printer management, e-mail notification, virtual printers, queue management and customer changeable consumables.

Successful workflow depends on customized software, industry experts say.

“Software has made a big push with the in-plant print shops as well as their customers,” says Kevin Hunter, director of the full-color business unit for Riso. He adds that software offers product quality control for those who know little about desktop publishing.

“Our customers are more interested in functionality where one person can receive the document, open it, make the necessary adjustments through software, print the document and have the ability to do things like hole punch or staple,” he says.

Buyers Lab is starting to see perfect binding on many high-end monochrome products.

“Everybody across the board is offering booklet finishers, and we continue to see units accommodate more pages,” Hoffman says. In some cases, trimmers are standard with the finishers to provide a flush cut.

In the future, Ricoh’s Coon says to look for products offering resolutions of 1,200 dpi or better, a wider range of stock handling with increasing speeds and falling prices.

“More of the change will occur with software in controllers/front ends and workflow,” he says. “Printer manufacturers will likely offer more of their own internally developed controllers and front ends.”

These front ends will make it easier to print a variety of data streams and incorporate sophisticated workflows at lower costs, he says.

As variable data increases in popularity, in-plants may wonder if it’s easier to do it with a black-and-white-only unit. Kodak’s Balik says those using a monochrome machine with enough stock flexibility can help clients manage costs while still producing attractive variable data pieces.

Cantabene, of Xerox, points out that the work process to deliver variable data printing in black-and-white or color is similar, but color file sizes are considerably larger, so the workstation computer and the printer RIP both need to be very robust to deliver rated speed output for color variable data.

Manufacturers say they will continue to make monochrome printers, a statement supported by Hoffman’s observations of the many high-speed monochrome printers on the market.

“There may be fewer of these models sold, but they are producing so much,” says the Buyers Lab managing editor. “Almost every vendor across the board has identified high-volume production monochrome printing as a sweet spot for revenue in this market because of customer demand.”

Still, Riso’s Hunter believes that, within five years, a majority of his company’s products will be four-color with black and white available.

“The demand for full-color is just so high it makes more sense for everyone to go in that direction,” he says. IPG