Making the leap to a digital large format printer

Time and progress marches on, generally taking us all with it. Twenty to thirty years ago, most small to medium sized engineering firms were making copies of their large format drawings using an ammonia based process. Choking back the smell of ammonia was simply a way of life. At the time, a xerographic copier cost more than $40K. Then the Xerox 2510, a xerographic copier costing $7,000 was introduced. Other manufacturers followed suit, allowing the industry to give up their ammonia belching machines in favor of this cleaner economical alternative.

The world of digital printers is now undergoing a similar paradigm shift. Thousands of companies who purchased those first generation analog wide format copiers are now finding these machines are finally giving up the ghost. Most manufacturers stopped supporting these machines years ago. This is causing replacement parts to become very expensive, or simply unavailable. Companies owning these machines are now faced with the decision of what machine to replace their old relics with. The choices are a new analog copier, or make the leap to a digital system.

A new analog copier today costs between $5-7K. This is a relatively painless way to replace the old work horse. However, this new machine will offer very little improvements in capability over the old machine it would replace. Typically, these low priced analog machines will simply allow you to make size-for-size copies of an original. On the other hand, a digital machine will provide coping with reduction and enlargement capability. In addition, the digital machine may be used to scan drawings to file, as well as print digital files.

The ability to print from file is of particular help to most contractors. Unlike the old days when a bid set would be provided in hard copy form, most bid sets these days are being provided in the form of .PDF files on a CD. This fact alone is usually the main determining factor for most companies to make the move up to a digital machine.

Not long ago, the least one could expect to spend for a digital copier/printer was $30K. These digital systems usually took up a lot of valuable floor space, and required special electrical circuits to power the equipment. However, there are now several manufacturers providing a single footprint wide format digital printer/scanner/copier with a starting price half of what the older digital systems cost. These machines require less power, and may be plugged into standard electrical circuits.

Once the decision has been made to go digital, the next choice is which manufacturer to choose. At RPG, we have tested all of the systems available on the market today. We have found the Xerox model 6204 to be the best over all value. Two key factors affected this choice: ease of use and product quality.

One thing that Xerox excels at is designing their equipment to be user friendly. The Xerox 6204 is very simple to use. This is true whether scanning images to digital file, printing to the machine over a network, or making copies. Most functions are very intuitive, so little training on the part of the user is necessary. The 6204 is also very reliable, which allows the user to be more productive. The best way to learn about this new breed of digital wide format system is to request a personal demonstration. For more information, go to www.rpg.com or call our sales team at 301-498-3225.