MATC Enhances Envelope Printing With New OKI

Whether it’s developing wrapping for on-campus vehicles, or printing signage around the college, the Printing Services department at the Milwaukee Area Technical College serves all student and faculty printing needs. But this print shop focuses on one category, in particular: envelopes.

This past September, the in-plant replaced its ABDick offset press with an OKI C942DP+ digital envelope press. The device features a high-capacity feeder, and the EFI Fiery C9 server.

“We brought in [the OKI] basically to do short-run and quick turnaround printing,” explains Gerald Trotter, manager of Printing Services. The OKI C942DP+ can print brilliant colors on dark-colored media using a white toner under CMYK. The shop uses solid white ink only 20% of the time, Trotter explains. The device’s ability to produce vibrant colors in a single pass also improves turnaround time.

Printing Services is responsible for printing all of the college’s envelopes, and while the in-plant typically outputs large quantities of envelopes at a time, the OKI allows for specialty products and last-minute changes.

“If we have one standard envelope that the entire university used, and if it needed something added to it … we could take those envelopes and actually send them through the OKI instead of trying to send them through one of our Xerox devices,” Trotter says. “When we send them though the Xerox device, it would work, but it still kind of wrinkles up the envelope. The OKI does not.”

Along with wanting to produce short runs quickly and efficiently, Trotter was looking for a machine capable of variable data printing. The OKI’s VDP capabilities allow for the imprinting of addresses onto envelopes.

“We have our Relay software, which is a Pitney Bowes software, that not only does variable data, but it uses an intelligent barcode,” Trotter says. “We want to start doing that as well on the OKI.”

On top of those features, Trotter was also impressed by how reliable the new digital envelope printer is. Employees don’t have to monitor envelope production as closely.

“Our guys [are] just able to fill up the envelope feeder and walk away, and then just come back to it when the envelope feeder [is] empty and just add more stock to it,” Trotter explains. “So, that’s one nice thing about it: you don’t have to sit and watch it and make sure everything is going correctly or worry about paper jams or whatnot.”

Along with the OKI, the print shop runs various other digital devices, including a Xerox 560 color press, Xerox D125 monochrome press, and a Xerox Nuvera 120 MX DPS. The in-plant also has two offset presses: a four-color Heidelberg MOVP-H press, and a two-color Heidelberg MOZP-S.

Trotter not only hires student workers at the print shop, but he also encourages students in the graphic design program to come in and develop projects on the in-plant’s devices.

“We have a Zünd digital cutter, [and] we actually help the students with their packaging projects so they can get a real-life experience on what’s really out there.” 

While the OKI has yet to be used by students, Trotter says that is something that could happen in the future.

Overall, the installation of the OKI has given customers of Printing Services more options, which has been especially nice for the students, says Trotter.

“We have something called MATC Day where we get the whole college, all four campuses, and they all meet together,” Trotter explains. “[This year], we created a piece talking about a video or a play that [the students] actually watched, and then gave them some more information on [the piece]. We were able to use a color stock and then printed white on there [to] make it pop, and people thought it was really nice.”