Northern Oklahoma College Adds Trio of Ricoh Printers

The three new Ricoh Pro digital printers recently added at Northern Oklahoma College are certainly making a difference.

“Our customers love the color work that we are able to do now,” reports Randy Long, director of Printing Services.

His five-employee in-plant recently installed the machines in its Tonkawa, Okla., facility. They are:

• A Ricoh Pro C901s Graphic Arts Edition, which cranks out 90 color pages per minute (ppm) regardless of media type or weight, and has an in-line booklet finisher.
• A Ricoh Pro 1107EX, which prints 110 monochrome ppm and is equipped with a booklet finisher, a 2-3 hole punch and a GBC die to punch sheets in-line for binding.
• A Ricoh Pro C550EX, added to provide some redundancy. It can print 55 color or 60 black-and-white ppm.

Since installation, Long has been impressed by the speed of the new digital printers, as well as their ability to color match.

“Our C901s can produce 20 sheets faster than our old Canon presses,” Long remarks. “But the main reason that I chose the Ricohs was because the color matches were fantastic.”

Long was able to justify the purchase to management due to a deal he made with Ricoh.

“Here in Oklahoma we have been in a downfall with state funding, so I told Ikon that we had to drop three percent off of our budget,” he says. “They dropped 3½ percent, so we are actually being charged less than what we were.”

The in-plant uses the Ricohs to produce brochures, posters, syllabi, letterheads, envelopes, business cards and promotional pieces for all three of the public community college’s campuses, in Tonkawa, Enid, and Stillwater. One of the larger jobs the shop produces is the college’s student recruiting magazine, Viewbook.

“Before we purchased the machines,” he notes, “I would run four-color on a two-color press, and the quality was not as good on that press compared to what I am getting now off of the Ricohs.”

Since adding the three digital machines, Long reports that the in-plant has gone from 20 jobs to almost 50 jobs a month. In addition to providing the three campuses with printed materials, the in-plant also serves as a key player on the academic side, offering an AAS degree in Printing Technology. Long teaches a course on printing, layout and design, giving students hands-on experience in the in-plant.

“The program has declined over the years,” he observes, “but it is starting to come back a little bit now.”