XANTÉ Corp.

Ever since he arrived at Elon University three years ago as manager of Printing Services, Wesley Grigg has had one overriding mission: “My goal was to change it from a ‘copy shop’ to being a full service printer,” he says of his three-employee in-plant, based in Elon, N.C. With this in mind, his first move was to install a Ricoh Pro C900 in 2010 and start printing more of the university’s high-quality color printing. 

The In-Plant Printing and Mailing Association conference brought 150 in-plant managers together in Kansas City recently.

Fujifilm will show the J Press 720 inkjet press. Heidelberg will present Prinect Digital Workflow Integration. New features for the Kodak NexPress platform will be shown.

Xanté Symphony Workflow is a comprehensive, turnkey PDF workflow featuring support for both the Adobe PDF Print Engine and Adobe PostScript 3. It drives all output devices (platesetters, imagesetters, laser printers, digital color presses, copiers, inkjet printers and plotters) from one RIP. Symphony Workflow’s scanning, trapping, screening, advanced imposition and ganging, Pantone Color Libraries support, and color proofing features are available for all output devices. Symphony Workflow automates tedious, error-prone prepress tasks and offers enhanced imposition that allows mixing of page sizes and orientations on a press sheet.

What was once a fairly low-volume print shop when it opened at Ball State University 30 years ago, has turned into a bustling operation. When Ken Johnson, director of Printing Services at the Muncie, Ind., school, saw that he could barely squeeze any more equipment into his in-plant’s 3,200-square-foot space, he knew it was time for a new facility. 

After opening its 19 halls to the public yesterday, drupa 2012 is in full swing right now in Dusseldorf, Germany. IPG's sister publication, Printing Impressions, has two editors walking the show floor. With 1,850 exhibitors from 56 countries showing their wares, our editors have more than their share of work ahead of them. Here are just a few of the reports that have trickled back to IPG.

After wowing those who saw its inkjet printheads in action at Graph Expo last year, Memjet is making a splash at Drupa right now. It just announced partnerships with several top print vendors, including Oce, Toshiba and Xanté.

A highlight of new computer-to-plate solutions from Agfa, Fujifilm, Glunz & Jensen, Heidelberg, Kodak, Mitsubishi Imaging, Screen (USA), Presstek and Xanté.

Over the past couple of years, there has been a noticeable increase in envelope printing at in-plants. The trend has been enabled by the availability of small digital envelope presses from companies like Xanté, PSI Engineering, Intoprint Technologies and OKI Data Americas. All of the devices use the same OKI print engine but offer different feeding options. These devices hit the market just as many in-plants' old offset duplicators were breaking down and their operators started retiring.

Now in its 18th year, the On Demand Conference and Exposition tried something new this time when it moved south of the Mason-Dixon line to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. Not everyone was happy with the results. Though some exhibits were packed at intervals, others were not so busy. Perhaps the absence of key companies like Xerox, Kodak, Presstek and Standard caused some potential attendees to skip this year's event. Or maybe D.C. was too far for the Northeast day trippers who attended previous years' shows in Philadelphia, Boston and New York.