iGen4 in the Sky

IT MAY not be enough for the record books, but Temple University Duplicating Services has installed what may be the highest Xerox iGen4 in the city of Philadelphia—and possibly the region.

In February the 11-employee in-plant fired up its new digital color press on the 10th floor of Temple's Wachman Hall, in a newly refurbished area that was designed to accommodate the machine's footprint.

"It's a good facility for us, because everything was reconstructed from scratch," remarks Director Maury Kane. The floor below the iGen4 was reinforced, and all wiring was routed underneath the floor, so it's not exposed. A long exhaust vent stretches up from the machine into the ceiling, some 20 feet above.

The new location is a far cry from the basement facilities most in-plants occupy. The window behind the iGen4 offers terrific views of the Philadelphia skyline. (As for whether Temple's iGen4 is indeed the loftiest, Xerox couldn't confirm it, but no one we asked knew of any iGens installed on a higher floor.)

Getting the digital press up 10 floors did not come easy, Kane admits. Despite extensive planning and measuring, when the main body of the iGen4 was wheeled through the building's lobby and over to the freight elevator, movers discovered that the machine wouldn't quite fit. They hadn't accounted for the dolly they were using to wheel it, he says. It took them several hours to shoehorn it into the elevator.

Once all the pieces had made the trip upstairs, it took about three days to build the machine, Kane says.

"So we were operating within a week," he adds.

Better Quality and Productivity

So far the iGen4 has been performing wonderfully, printing high-quality items like brochures, booklets, flyers and newsletters.

"I love it. It runs really well," reports Ken Daskus, network document production coordinator.

The in-plant traded in its DocuColor 5000 to get the iGen4 as part of a lease renewal that included all of Temple's copiers/MFDs. –Temple has partnered with Xerox on its fleet of copiers/MFDs for the past 10 years.

Steve Gallagher, copy center supervisor, observes that the iGen4's output looks much more like offset than the more glossy finish provided by the 5000. He also likes that the iGen4 can take a larger sheet size.

"The largest size we could do on [the 5000] was 12x18˝," he says. "Now we can go up to 14x22˝."

Its speed is also much faster: 110 pages per minute, versus 50 ppm on the 5000. And the iGen4 can print on heavier sheets. Because of this, the in-plant has expanded the number of stocks it uses. This has made Daskus long for even more paper drawers than the four that the machine has.

"You can add more; we just don't have the space," he remarks. Limited space also prevented the in-plant from moving most of its bindery equipment there. Much of it resides in another location, down the street. In busy times, Daskus has to make two trips a day—down 10 floors, across Broad Street and up another elevator—to transport printed sheets there for cutting and folding. But dealing with space limitations is all part of being a city in-plant, Gallagher muses.

As for the iGen4, the improvements it has brought more than make up for these minor inconveniences, Kane says.

"The quality of digital color reprographics has come a long way in the past 25 years," he remarks. "Becoming a stronger player in the color market will provide the university with the internal resources for variable data printing, consistency of its licensed marks, and an expedient production workflow available to our Philadelphia-based campuses."IPG