One Machine to Do It All in Bangor

By Bob Neubauer

When it came time to replace his eight-year-old Ricoh Pro 5110, Walter Ryan knew he needed a machine that could produce a variety of work — from business cards to bus signage. He wanted to be able to print specialty colors on thick substrates and still output long runs of envelopes.

“With a one-man shop, I had to make sure everything runs on one machine,” says Ryan, print shop foreman for the City of Bangor, Maine, Central Services Division.

He found all that in a Xerox Versant 280. His in-plant installed the press in February — reportedly the first Versant 280 in Maine. At 18ˈ long, it takes up a considerable portion of his shop, in the basement of Bangor’s City Hall.

With a Xerox High-Capacity XLS Vacuum Feeder and a Xerox High-Capacity Stacker on the back end, it is proving to be a very productive device.

“I have some very large jobs and that stacker will hold about 5,000 sheets, and then when that’s full, I can just roll it out, take it over to the table and put everything on there,” he says. “It helps tremendously.”

As the sole employee of the in-plant, Ryan handles printing for City Hall, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, the airport, and Bangor’s school district. He’s excited about the Versant 280’s specialty color capabilities: white, silver, gold, fluorescent, and clear. He has already used the white ink to print “Hours of Operation” stickers on a clear substrate to post in City Hall. The fluorescent ink will be used for “Heavy Load Limit” seasonal road signs for the Public Works Department and on plastic “No Parking” signs for the Police Department. The Versant 280 can handle larger sheets than the shop’s previous printer — up to 13x47.2" — and can print on thicker substrates.

“It will handle a 14-mil plastic sheet,” Ryan says.

This has let him print signage and other work he previously couldn’t handle. Ryan has even printed on wood veneer.

“We’re also running foil card stock,” he says.

These new capabilities have increased his shop’s value, Ryan says; as customers see what the press can do, they are coming up with new ideas.

At the same time, the Versant 280 can print all the in-plant’s usual jobs: business cards, letterhead, school packets, voter registration cards, graduation programs, invitations, testing booklets, and more. No. 10 envelopes are no problem either; Ryan has already printed 15,000 of them.

He says Xerox has offered to give online design courses to his customers to help them make better use of the white ink and fluorescent features. He expects to print even more creative applications in the future.

“I’m having a lot of fun with it,” he says.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.