Penn State Brings iGen3 To Happy Valley
The demand for short-run digital color printing has jumped so much at Pennsylvania State University’s Multimedia & Print Center (MPC) that the 75-employee in-plant’s Xerox 6060 just couldn’t cut it any more.
“We were maxed out on the 6060,” remarks Director Abbas Badani.
So in August the University Park, Pa.-based in-plant installed a new Xerox iGen3. In September, its first full month of operation, the digital press pumped out 200,000 impressions, about 25 percent of which had previously been printed on the shop’s offset presses. The goal, Badani says, is a quarter million impressions a month.
Just back from the Southeastern University Printing and Digital Managers Conference (SUPDMC), Badani says digital color printing was a big topic of discussion among attendees.
“It’s a growth area,” he observes. “Everybody needs to take a position on it. If you don’t, you’re missing a whole segment that you’re not positioning yourself for.”
And positioning for the future was the main reason MPC installed the iGen3. As recently as last year, the in-plant had been considering a new four-color press. But after some hard thinking about the in-plant’s future, Badani realized the in-plant needed a digital press to position itself strategically for the next two to three years.
“For us, it’s a matter of not just right now, it’s a matter of what we think we’re going to be three years from now,” he says.
To get customers comfortable with digital printing, Badani says the in-plant has been using the iGen3 to produce a few sample copies of offset jobs to show to customers so they can see how good the quality is.
“It makes people look at things differently,” he says.
Badani says the iGen3’s maximum page size of 14x20˝ allows the shop to run 6x9˝ postcards four-up, a major cost and time savings. The in-plant is also printing admission letters on the press. Previously, it preprinted shells for letters on an offset press, then added the variable data. Now it is all done in one pass on the iGen3.
Badani made a good case to the university for the iGen3, and as a result the university loaned MPC the money to buy—not lease—the device. Because it has invested in the press, Abbas says, the university has a commitment to support the iGen3 and the in-plant.
- Companies:
- Xerox Corp.
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.
