Wide-Format Adds Printing Possibilities at Amherst

When a printer is on sale for less than what you normally spend to buy ink for your other printers, you don’t pass up the opportunity.

Showing off the new Canon imagePROGRAF iPF8400 installed at the Campus Print & Mail Center at Amherst College are (from left) Jason VanDamme, Robert Kleindienst and Rod Squier. Missing: Patricia Connelly.

That’s what happened to Rod Squier, manager of the Campus Print & Mail Center at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass., when Canon offered a deal on its imagePROGRAF iPF8400. The low price made it easy to justify the 44˝ wide-format printer to the school, and in December the in-plant added it to its four-employee operation.

“It has opened up a whole new realm of printing possibilities,” Squier says.

Although this isn’t Campus Print & Mail’s first experience with wide-format — it previously acquired two HP Designjet 5500s from the school’s library, where they weren’t getting much use — the new printer has let the shop expand into vinyl, polyester and polypropylene outdoor signage.

In May, Campus Print & Mail completed a project for the school’s commencement ceremony that included 460 12x12˝ signs mounted on corrugated plastic — one for each graduating senior. The personalized signs featured the name of each senior along with the school’s commencement social media hashtag. In all, the project took approximately four days. The printing, Squire explains, was fast, but the cutting, removal of the adhesive backing and trimming were labor intensive.

The signs were displayed using lawn sign holders and were placed in the grass outside the graduation ceremony, along with cutouts of the letter “A.” The letter cutouts, however, were outsourced to a local printer that printed them directly on corrugated plastic with a flatbed printer and trimmed them.

Since the new addition, Campus Print & Mail has been creating a lot more outdoor signage than it did with the HPs. It recently completed a 15x4´ vinyl banner. The imagePROGRAF iPF8400 has also brought in other business, including draft and blueprint work for Amherst College’s new $200 million science center, which is under construction.

For indoor and outdoor projects that require lamination, the in-plant uses its 44˝ Phoenix laminator, which was acquired through a deal with Bucknell University’s in-plant.

And although the shop has only had the press for about seven months, Squire says it’s already paid for itself. That is partially due to the initial price of the equipment, but also because the printer has brought in more work; the cost for customers is much less when compared to outside printers.

“[Customers] were always going to outside sources that were charging them two to three times more than what we can charge them for the same print,” he explains.

Squier says that overall, the imagePROGRAF iPF8400 has been a sound investment because it has sped up productivity, maintains high quality and can print on a wider range of substrates than the shop’s other printers.

The in-plant recently added Print Shop Pro shop management software from edu Business Solutions, and Squier is hard at work collecting data for a late summer launch.