New Digital Printer Enhances Student Workers’ Skills

Thomas Lecy, supervisor of Printing Services at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), has a plan for the student interns at his in-plant: he wants to train them well on all the aspects of the in-plant, including the new Ricoh Pro C901s his shop recently acquired. That way when they graduate they will have marketable skills beyond their degree.

“I’d like to develop them and get a few interns so when they graduate, they can step out running,” Lecy remarks.

The five employee in-plant, with a budget of $625,000, usually hires a couple of interns, but Lecy feels he may need a few more because of the new purchase.

The Ricoh Pro C901s color printer has really made a mark on the in-plant. Specifically, the mark is that it holds the color on the letterheads, brochures, business cards and four-color jobs it prints.

“It’s a lot faster,” Lecy remarks. “It holds the color. The registration is holding true. Overall, the machine is doing what we were told it would do.”

The Ricoh replaced a Konica Minolta 6500. “We outgrew it. It has far too many impressions on it. It was run into the ground in three years,” he explains. “But since [the Pro C901s] is faster, we’re waiting for jobs now. We expected probably about 60,000 impressions a month; we’re up to 80,000.”

Lecy says 60 to 70 percent of the shop’s jobs are turned around in 24 hours. “And now that we have this machine, we expect to bring more people in,” he says. The university also prints books, and the publication department likes what it sees.

“I haven’t heard any complaints,” he says, adding, “but since school is out it’s hard to tell.”

Printing Services handles a lot of student walk-up jobs, so Lecy expects that demand for color printing will skyrocket when school is back in session. He is excited.

“We can offer the university a lot more now. We have the cream of the crop,” he exudes. “We have just passed 425,000 impressions on it and have had only one minor service call.”