Color copier/printers are coming down in price and going up in quality. Find out why you should fit one into your in-plant's future. "INTRODUCING THE new ABC 2000000 color copier/printer/fax/coffee maker/toothbrush." OK, that's a little extreme. But color copiers are becoming more versatile every day. You can't afford a machine like that, you say? Well, prices are dropping. Even small in-plants can afford quality multi-task machines. Plus, these machines quickly pay for themselves, says Ron Potesky, Ricoh's director of color products—especially if you're outsourcing more than 500 copies a month. "The in-plant is saving at least a 40 percent margin over
Xerox Corp.
Drupa 2000 was the best of the old, the best of the new and the best of what's yet to be for true integrated digital prepress. As far as prepress was concerned, Drupa 2000 affirmed the reliability of the old, elevated the promise of the new and positioned leading market players in new strategic patterns. All that, in just 14 days. Drupa 2000 registered a strong vote for the necessity of true digital prepress integration—as well as the health of proven technologies, from imagesetters to scanners. Drupa also marked the true affirmation of PDF as the globally accepted next standard—with more
The print world certainly has gone digital, and On Demand was the place to see the latest—from digital printing to Internet-based job management. If you haven't left your in-plant in a while, the recent On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing Strategy Conference and Exposition would have made your head spin. Judging by the abundance of digital technology packed into New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, it was clear that the printing industry's move into the digital world is accelerating rapidly. "The world is now moving at Internet time, so fast that the landscape is just a blur," noted Charles Pesko, managing
Xerox has announced several new products designed to fill the gaps in speed not covered by its current offerings. Judging by the number of new digital printing devices introduced or hinted at during last month's On Demand conference in New York, it's clear that industry vendors see a big future in digital printing—and digital color, in particular. One of those vendors, Xerox, has been on the cutting edge for years. Its DocuTech forever changed the way black-and-white documents were produced. Likewise its DocuColor 40 made production digital color more viable for in-plants. Now Xerox has stepped forward again with new developments in
For Bob Hulett, printing has been a lifelong interest. He has turned that interest into a successful career with Beckman Coulter. FOUR YEARS of high school graphic arts classes paved the way for Robert Hulett's future career in the printing industry. And though subsequent studies at California's Fullerton College increased his knowledge of print and prepress technology, Hulett already knew what he wanted to be—a printer. "It was an interest way back in high school," he recalls. "Graphics really appealed to me." Hulett knew that his father's company, Beckman Coulter, had an in-plant print shop, so when he got out of school he applied
By keeping management informed of his in-plant's anticipated growth, Tim Waltz has been able to keep his shop properly equipped. Tim Waltz may not have been born to work in an in-plant, but he sure didn't waste any time getting himself a job in one. He was only 17 when he started working in the in-plant in his Minnesota high school, Austin Public School. He had taken a few graphic arts courses and fallen in love with the job. Now, 18 years later, as printing services manager of Cherry Creek Schools' eight-employee in-plant in Aurora, Colo., Waltz still loves his job. He has
The DocuTech is no longer the only choice when it comes to high-speed copying. New players in the market are now vying for customers. Equipment choices used to be clear-cut for in-plant managers: High-quality and long-run reproduction went on an offset press. Shorter-run, quick and dirty black-and-white work went on a duplicator. Copiers were low-end, low-quality devices. Not anymore. Today's crop of black-and-white copiers offer true 600x600 dpi resolution, speeds of up to 85 ppm (with tandem or cluster printing magnifying that 12-fold) and, through digital technology, networking, printing, scanning and advanced finishing. For instance, Ricoh's new digital Aficio 850 offers 85-ppm, 600-dpi output
Indigo's new digital presses directly challenge the mainstream commercial offset market and the domain of black-and-white xerography. In a swirl of colored lights and exotic music, Indigo N.V. Chairman and CEO Benny Landa unveiled several impressive digital printing devices at his company's headquarters in Nes Ziona, Israel, recently—devices sure to draw the attention of industry stalwarts like Heidelberg and Xerox. As a crowd of journalists and consultants from around the world took in the scene, Landa discussed the technologies Indigo plans to debut at DRUPA—technologies intended to bring digital offset color into the heart of the commercial printing market. New products include: • A
School district in-plants print everything from tests to textbooks. Our exclusive survey and detailed in-plant profiles will teach you all you want to know. Our survey of school district in-plants pulled in an impressive 208 responses. The majority of these in-plants are small, single-person operations. Many of them combine graphic arts instruction and printing, sometimes using students to produce the schools' materials. We received 45 responses from in-plants that exist primarily as classrooms—21.6 percent of the total—but we opted not to include their data in our results so that we could focus on in-plants whose primary purpose is to print the materials that
For short-run, on-demand work—especially work that can be enhanced with variable data—digital printing is the answer. FOR YEARS the data center at Georgia Tech University was churning out up to 12 million impressions annually and was a separate department from the in-plant. Paul Thomas, director of printing and copying services, knew that if he could combine both departments, he would produce this work cheaper and faster. Last year Thomas merged the in-plant with the data center. He then made another bold move by purchasing two new 110-ppm Kodak DigiSource 9110s, distributed through Danka. He hasn't looked back since. "It enabled us to take