Editor’s Note: Below are three articles about new equipment from the perspective of the reprographics shop, rather than the manufacturer.
Billy Hamilton: HP PageWide
Billy Hamilton is CEO of RGS, a reprographics firm with locations in Las Vegas and Singapore. The company focuses primarily on the AEC market. The company acquired two HP PageWide printers in November, and they have been up and running since January.
Q: Why did you decide to acquire the PageWides?
A: One reason we decided to upgrade was that we’ve seen that architects and engineers are paying a lot more attention to fine detail, and we just knew we were going to have upgrade to meet their expectations. We looked at all the options from KIP, HP, and Canon, and we just went through the process – getting color samples, asking many, many questions — and ultimately decided that even though the PageWide was very new, and we knew there would be some kinks and learning curves to go through, that it was the best equipment for us. We had some other HP printers already, and combined with our other HP models, the PageWide gives us the complete package.
Q: Have your PageWides lived up to your expectations so far?
A: Our production team really took to the PageWides right away. We’ve probably put about 1.5 million square feet on the machines already. I’ve not had one complaint from clients on quality. And in terms of speed, we are able to do things far quicker, it’s amazing. For example, we had a job this morning – between 1,200 and 1,300 color prints. Before this we would have been doing this job still tomorrow, but the PageWides had it done in under an hour. The time efficiency savings have been huge on the PageWide, without a drop in quality. When we do stuff like that we know we made the right decision.
Q: How dependable have the PageWides been?
A: We’ve had very few issues in terms of breakdowns or something. What we have experienced is with the HP SmartStream software — it’s had its bugs. But we take a practical view of that, and we know we have to work out the bugs, and that never put us off. The one thing we’ve been pretty impressed with is that they’ve had a lot of feedback from us — for example we’ve seen all sorts of things of how the machine reacts to the different types of files — and HP has been very proactive with that information. They’ve come up with some major upgrades in the time we’ve had it. So we’ve been happy with their response so far.
Q: How has your cost per print been?
A: That’s one of the biggest questions I’ve had from others. We heard that there’s no way that the cost of running PageWide could be as cheap as [toner-based printers], so one thing we did right away is added up all the costs and we’ve been very pleasantly surprised that in terms of cost of doing prints we’ve found it to be spot on and virtually identical to running the [toner-based] machines.
Q: What kind of work have you been running on the PageWides?
A: We’re seeing that the majority of the color work is CAD color, line drawings, mark-ups, whatever. But we’ve also had good results with standard posters, and we’re hoping we’ll increase that business.
Q: Have you been able to capture more CAD color work because the cost is less than the cost of running these prints on typical inkjet printers?
A: We have been a little more aggressive on price, but not overly aggressive. We do not want to come down extremely cheap just because we can do it fast. People still regard it as a premium service. Even though PageWide is fantastic with speed, we’re not going to throw in our clients’ face that it’s massively faster because the immediate reaction is that it must be cheaper.
Q: Any advice for others interested in the PageWide?
A: I say do your homework. We looked at all the options, and did as much homework as we could. We didn’t rush into this. [And once you get the machine] run the hell out of it the first month. We didn’t play lightly with the new machines – we made the conscious decision to put as much as possible through them.
Follow-up Questions from an IRgA Member:
1) What type of routine maintenance does the PageWide require? In your experience so far, how long does that maintenance take? How much does it cost, and how often do you have to do it?
At the moment and pleasantly surprised, we have required very little routine maintenance. You do have to replace the cleaning containers and maintenance cartridges every so often (We have done it a couple of times so far) and we have had to run the calibration process using the polypropylene material a few times which HP recommends for best calibration, but as of yet what we have had to do so far, takes a small amount of time.
2) Would it be feasible to run mostly B&W prints? Is there a monochrome-only mode? If you print B&W, what inks are used?
Yes, it would be feasible to run mostly b/w prints and although there is no monochrome only mode (It is a grayscale mode), the amount of color ink used if prints are only grayscale is so minimal you would never notice it when doing running cost calculations which we do.
3) Is the 1.5 million sq ft that you've run so far primarily CAD color?
No, the higher percentage has been printed in b/w.
4) Do the prints need time to dry?
Line color does not need any time to dry. If you are printing posters and they have quite a lot of color fill, then it is better to not handle them straight right away, just give them a few seconds, that is all.
5) Rumors exist that HP raised the price of inks already. True?
If they have, I have not heard of it. We are paying the same price now as when we bought the equipment albeit, they do charge more for Cyan, Magenta & Yellow than they do for black ink.
6) When there have been problems, who fixes them? Are you self-servicing? What has caused breakdowns so far?
We are self-servicing which is a big plus for us. We have had no significant breakdowns as of yet, all minor issues which have been taken care of quickly.
Peter Shaw: KIP 870
Peter Shaw is vice president of Jamaica Blue Print, a reprographics firm in Queens, New York. He purchased a KIP 870 in January. The KIP 870 is a toner-based large-format color printer.
IRgA: What do you use the KIP 870 for?
Shaw: We use it mainly for CAD color work, though we’re starting to put some of our black and white work on it when we have to. CAD color is a growing piece of our work. Monochrome is still the main component, but in the foreseeable future I see it transitioning to all color. We did a job a couple of weeks back where color wasn’t throughout, but the black and white pages had a color logo on it. So everything is transitioning to color.
IRgA: You were using conventional inkjet printers to do CAD color work before. How does the cost compare?
Shaw: The initial cost of this printer is $20,000 to $30,000 depending on configuration. If you take out the initial investment, the per print toner cost is less than half.
IRgA: Have you received more color CAD work because of this printer?
Shaw: We’ve secured more CAD color work, and if we didn’t have this machine we wouldn’t be able to get the work out the door in the timeframe that we have. This new type of print engine also has the ability to produce a better monochrome print, so overall the quality of output is improved while adding color, which some customers recognize as a benefit.
IRgA: How fast is the printer?
Shaw: You’re talking about six to nine D-size prints per minute, versus two a minute on an inkjet.
IRgA: How has the quality been?
Shaw: The quality for CAD line work is as good, if not better, than with our inkjets, because we’re running a toner-based machine. That’s why we tended to go down this road – because it’s toner based machine. But if you’re looking to do any kind of graphic point of purchase work, you need the inkjet quality. There’s a threshold with these machines you cannot cross.
IRgA: How reliable has it been?
Shaw: It’s been extremely reliable. We’ve basically had very little downtime. We’ve had maybe one error code, which we were able to troubleshoot and get past. So it has been extremely reliable.
IRgA: What type of maintenance does it require? How long does the maintenance take, and how much does that cost?
Shaw: Maintenance is just like our monochrome machines and recommended initial startup supplies – the drums, wires, developer unit, etc. -- cost around $3-4k. We are service trained so down time has been very little. The operation and maintenance costs are directly related to the volumes you place on the equipment. While toner use is very much related to amount of “laydown,” the drums, wires, etc. are related to overall throughput volumes, too. So, depending on amount of color/black toner used, that will determine overall maintenance costs. The initial install is more involved because of the overall complexity of these systems. Once installed and calibrated you run the quality print checks as necessary.
IRgA: Are customers happy with the output?
Shaw: They like the prints, and they like the fact that there are new materials coming out for the machine. We’re running a textile material, which, together with the toner, makes a water-resistant and tear-resistant print that’s perfect for a rainy day on the worksite. In the New York City area every jobsite needs an approved set on the site always. If an inspector visits the site and approved drawings aren’t there the fine can be up to $5000.
IRgA: Anything you’d like to add?
Shaw: I think the biggest thing is, people are going to be forced into color. As monochrome machines need to be replaced, they’re going to be replaced with color, not monochrome. We’ll see how fast that will ramp up to color will be -- it has to do with the public acceptance of color work. I think owners and agencies are going to be pushing the contractors. The interesting thing is everything is designed in color to start with. The files were dumbed down to black and white because we had black and white printers. That’s no longer an issue. So coming from multiple angles, I do see monochrome equipment having a niche, but the pendulum is starting to swing the other way, to more and more work coming in color.
Steven Strooh: Océ ColorWave 900 and 910
How long have you used the Océ ColorWaves?
Strooh: We acquired our ColorWave 900 in 2014 and our ColorWave 910 in 2015.
What do you use them for?
On a daily basis we print AEC prints. And as a subset of that some of it is title block based color, where the logo is in color but everything else is black and white. And then a secondary is mark-ups, so a bit of red. And then the third category are drawings designed in color. In terms of volume, 70 percent – 75 percent is AEC. Some is just black and white, overflow from our regular black and white machines. Or sometimes if we have a black and white drawing with a resolution issue – such as with some fine lines or shading issues – we run that on the ColorWave because it looks better. But 90 percent of what we run on the ColorWave has at least some color.
What about graphics work?
The graphics work we do on the ColorWaves is primarily mid-volume posters (a couple of hundred posters), primarily 24×36 and above, and usually on an inexpensive media. The customers who use the ColorWaves for posters choose that option because it’s the fastest, cheapest way to get the posters they need. If they have time, and/or money, they go with one of the premium options – such as an HP latex print.
The color output from the ColorWaves is very saturated, very sharp looking. But there is a problem with artifacts – they can’t predictably print artifact-free prints on demand. Otherwise it would be the best in speed and quality. The standard we use is, “Is it a saleable print?” And when you’re dealing with high-end graphics, such as for an agency or a customer who wants to promote a product, obviously they want those to be flawless. In our business the standard is perfect. So the slightest imperfection makes a print unsaleable in that category.
The artifacts come about because when you’re dealing with paper, you’re cutting that paper prior to it being transported under the head, and whenever you cut paper you have paper dust, and that’s swirling inside the imaging area and sometimes gets stuck on the print. The paper drags along the fine nozzles, so it is quite easy for one of the nozzles to get blocked. And there’s no redundancy, so if the nozzle is out it’s out, until it’s cleaned.
We still print a lot of posters on the ColorWaves, but they’re mostly informational. We don’t do window graphics because the inks are dye-based and fade in the sun. But indoors I would say a print would last a couple of years.
What kind of maintenance does it require?
It needs cleaning when it needs cleaning and that depends on how much you use it. The heads are rated for so many milliliters of ink. When you’re running line drawings, it’s using very little ink per head. So you could run a thousand sheets of posters with one set of heads. Or you could run 10,000 line drawings. Because we print 75 percent line drawings, we’ve often surpassed the useful life of the head because any problems the heads might be having are not as noticeable on line drawings. But then when we use that same head to print a poster, the poster looks terrible, because the problems show up much more on a poster than on a line drawing. This is a tendency it took us a while to figure out. Now if we’re going to do a full-coverage job, we do some cleaning and test prints and see if we need to replace the heads.
But if you’re thinking about stoppage, very seldom do we get a stoppage due to a malfunction; it’s because of the heads.
It costs $315 to replace a head, and there are five of them. Standard procedure is to replace all of them at once, but that’s not always necessary. We are able to change the heads ourselves. We only need a technician for more complicated problems. We’re pretty self-sufficient at keeping the machine running. We do have a fantastic tech who services us, but for most part we can do it ourselves.
What has your cost per print been?
The cost per print is on average 4.5 cents per square foot for line drawings and graphics, including service, paper, and all other consumables. The cost does vary for graphics versus line work, but it’s hard to break out. The ink is just a small part of the overall picture.