New Wide-Format and B&W Printer Bring Speed and Quality to Mesa

Equipment can’t last forever. So, when Joseph Barz, the print operations supervisor for Mesa Public Schools in Mesa, Arizona, got the notice that his in-plant’s black-and-white printer was at the end of its life, he decided it was time to invest in a brand new Canon varioPRINT TITAN monochrome printer.  Even though black-and-white print volumes have been decreasing over the years, Barz says his eight-person in-plant needs to keep up with black-and-white demands.

With the Canon varioPRINT TITAN at Mesa Public Schools’ in-plant are (front, from left) Cory Nichols, Raymond Foster, Ky Browe, and Anabella Betance. Back, from left: David Aranda, Matthew Scoutten, Joseph Barz, and Diana Ciani-Cebuhar. | Credit: Mesa Public Schools

“We’re the largest school district in Arizona, and our in-plant is responsible for printing agendas for each individual school,” Barz says. “So that’s about 50-60 schools with upwards of 1,200 agendas per school, and these agendas can range anywhere between 80 pages and 140 pages. And we do that twice a year, so our black-and-white print demand is still very high.”

Ultimately, Barz says, speed and quality are what sold him on the TITAN. The new digital printer has double paper feed decks and double stackers that allow the TITAN to run unassisted for up to two hours, a feature the shop takes great advantage of.

“We load it before we leave for the day, and from that we get up to two hours of unmanned work,” Barz says. “If you look at the amount of time we can run the machine, it’s pretty profound, and we can produce a lot of work.”

In addition to the new TITAN, the in-plant has also installed a 44" Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4600 wide-format printer, which replaced its seven-year-old HP DesignJet Z5600.

“Price-wise, it was right there with an HP. It’s faster, it’s 11 colors, and again it came down to the speed and quality of the machine,” Barz says.

Showing off the new Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-4600 are (from left) Matthew Scoutten, Raymond Foster, and Diana Ciani-Cebuhar. | Credit: Mesa Public Schools

It also helped that Canon has a presence near Mesa, he adds, to provide quick maintenance if needed.
Another advantage of the Canon imagePROGRAF is that it’s a front-load printer, which is more convenient for Barz and his employees since it sits against the wall in the shop.

“When we had the HP, every time we loaded it, we had to pull it … away from the wall and then push it back in,” he says. “The other nice thing is that the Canon will tell you how much of the roll you have left.”

Overall, Barz believes these new machines allow the in-plant to get product out faster than it did before, with the same if not better quality.

“We pride ourselves on quality,” he says. “We get comments all of the time. In fact, we just got one from one of the school secretaries telling us how great of a job we always do. So, if investing in better technology allows us to get jobs done quickly with that high level of quality, then so be it.”