Framingham State University Doubles Up on Color Printers

It’s a dilemma many in-plants are facing: Is there enough black-and-white volume to justify keeping a dedicated monochrome digital printer? In Framingham, Massachusetts, Dillon Handy pondered that very question a few months ago.

“When the lease came up for renewal, I really looked at what our volumes were for color versus black-and-white,” says the supervisor of Print Services at Framingham State University. “And it came out to be that our black-and-white dedicated unit was only seeing use primarily at the beginning of each semester, and then it would sit idle most of the time.”

He calculated that his in-plant’s Konica Minolta bizhub PRO 1100 monochrome printer produced only 15% of the shop’s cut-sheet volume.

“Is it really worth it to have a dedicated black-and-white [printer] for that low of a volume?” he wondered.

It was not.

So in January, the in-plant replaced the 1100 and a Konica Minolta AccurioPress C6100 digital color press with two AccurioPress C4070s. One is configured with eight paper trays, a bookletmaker, a punch, and a multi-folder. The other boasts a long-sheet feeder, a bookletmaker, and a stacker tray. The two units give the in-plant the versatility to continue printing black-and-white pages, while handling the shop’s growing need for color.

“It’s been a huge help in reducing our turnaround time,” Handy says.

Each press has an IQ-501 Intelligent Quality Optimizer, which constantly monitors and adjusts printed output, providing automatic density correction, improved color consistency, and better front-to-back registration accuracy.

“It just saves us so much time in duplexing alignment,” he says.

The in-plant, staffed by two full-timers and four student workers, is using the C4070s to print a variety of materials for the 185-year-old university located on the outskirts of Boston, from brochures and booklets to trifold letter-size pieces, thanks to the long-sheet feeder.

These weren’t the only new pieces of equipment the shop added in recent months. It also installed a Duplo DC-618 slitter/cutter/creaser to replace a previous creaser that gave up the ghost.

The in-plant's recently installed Duplo DC-618 slitter/cutter/creaser offers a one-stop shop opportunity for cutting and folding.

“It’s been something that I’ve had on my wish list … for probably five years,” Handy reveals. “This is a machine that’s going to be a one-stop shop for 90% of the stuff that we cut and fold.”

Rather than cutting on a guillotine cutter and then bringing sheets to a folder, he says, “now everything’s all in one. It’s been a game-changer. We’re able to turn around things so much faster than we used to.”