Xerox Commercial Printers (How to Choose the Best One for a High Volume Business)
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Print-intensive environments demand a high-performance printer and copier that delivers. Choosing from the best Xerox commercial printers and copiers for your business can be challenging.
The typical high volume office color printer will not hold up to the demands of a high-volume print environment – for this task, you need a specialized print solution.
Choose your High-Volume Xerox Printer by Average Monthly Volume
The term high-volume can mean different things to different businesses. Identifying the right printer for your office requires finding out what your average monthly print volume is. This can be done by using print audit software, but only if your business department is currently printing at or around the expected capacity of your future printer.
If you are purchasing a printer for a new business, or for a new department in an existing business, a print audit may not be possible since you haven’t started printing documents yet. In that case, an estimate based on your business plan and projections will have to do.
In most cases, commercial Xerox printers such as the Xerox VersaLink printers models can handle monthly average print volumes of between 10,000 and 50,000 pages. High-performance standalone devices like the Xerox D-Series can handle anywhere between 70,000 to 700,000 pages per month.
There are cases when purchasing multiple smaller Xerox printers is a more feasible option than buying one large high-volume Xerox printer, such as:
- Mixed print environments
- Print procurement for multiple departments with differing needs
- Managed print service contracts
However, in print centers for schools and large institutions, the need to have a dedicated high-volume printer outweighs the potential benefits of purchasing multiple small printers. In particular, the per-page cost of the Xerox D-Series is far lower than that of smaller models. Consolidating high-volume printing workflows in a singular device pays off in the long run.
Monochrome or Color Xerox Commercial Printers?
The Xerox D-series consists of black-and-white printers with rated print speed outputs of 100 to 125 pages per minute. This is more than double the print speed of most office color office printers.
As a result, one of the most important questions print center process owners need to ask is whether color is important for the majority of their planned print volume. Xerox D-series grayscaling uses 256 shades at 600 x 600 DPI to produce faithful monochrome duplicates of color originals.
In a legal or academic environment where the vast majority of printed materials consist of text, high quality grayscaling represents a key cost-saving advantage over color printing. This can also apply to the healthcare sector, but it depends on the specific application of the printer.
Finishing Options
One of the most attractive drivers of value that Xerox D-Series printers offer is compatibility with a broad range of finishing options.
One of the most popular additional finishing modules is the Standard finisher with C/Z folding. This finisher can hole-punch and stack up to 3,000 sheets. It can interpose documents and staple them as they leave the D-series output tray.
The Xerox D-110 and Xerox D-125 support additional advanced finishing options. Advanced finishing options include high-volume booklet making, folding, hole punching, square-fold trimming, stacking, and tape binding.
The Plockmatic Pro 50/35 Booklet Maker can produce square-folded documents and stitched-and-folded documents alike. Using ISO-standard 80-GSM paper, it can fold 1 to 50 individual pages. Combined with the Xerox Tape Binder, offices can bind black-and-white documents to create professional booklets of up to 125 sheets.
High-Volume Xerox Commercial Printer Applications
The D-series is more than a pay-for-print shop workhorse. It has numerous applications throughout a range of large-scale enterprise and institutional environments.
In the academic environment, D-series printers let educators create curriculum materials and student workbooks with ease. Collated slip sheets are perfect for classroom handouts, and full-color scanning allows teachers to achieve color scan-to-email capability while saving money on print resources.
In legal, insurance, and healthcare environments, bates stamping allows process owners to apply unique 16-digit alphanumeric descriptors of each page. In-line finishing allows employees to create professionally bound documents in-house, improving process cost-efficiency.
Data centers rely on the D-Series high-volume printers to generate statements, schedules, and tape-bound documentation. Additionally, personalized data stream printing support is available through optional Xerox FreeFlow print server functionality.
Key Features of Xerox High Volume Printers
Each individual product contains new features, innovative finishing options, and a broad range of productivity boosting specifications that serve to support the bottom lines of the company’s clients.
From the company’s VersaLink printer line – plug-and-play network-compatible devices for small workgroups – to its respected line of production and high-volume printers, new features are making operators’ lives easier across the board.
For production printers like the Xerox Versant 3100, key features include both hardware automation and software packages that serve to reduce the amount of time operators spend on challenging tasks like color calibration and personalization.
These features will help large-scale businesses turn their printers into value-added document-processing production centers. Learn more about these features and learn about the many benefits of incorporating them into your document workflow.
Xerox Workflow Software
Intelligent software can help operators make better use of high-volume printers like the Xerox Versant 180 and 3100. These solutions help operators save time while ensuring consistent top-quality results.
FreeFlow Variable Information Suite
Marketing campaigns often rely on personalization in order to capture customers’ attention. It’s a tried-and-true strategy that produces results generic brand messaging simply cannot match. But by its very nature, personalization is difficult to scale – how do you personalize printed documents for thousands of individuals?
The answer is simple: Use the FreeFlow Variable Information Suite. This suite contains multiple software solutions that allow for unrestricted personalization on almost every level of the document printing process. Use VI Design Express to create variable text, variable layers, unique barcodes, and more. Use VI Compose to merge data while printing in real-time and eliminate time-consuming pre-composition.
ORIS Press Matcher
Depending on your specific industry, you may find yourself in need of a solution for matching color industry standards. If your customers and partners expect documents colors to reflect FOGRA or Pantone standards, you must comply or risk losing business.
ORIS Press Matcher makes this process simple. It provides industry-standard color management services for the entire enterprise. This means that short print runs can have the same color quality as sheet-fed runs, independent of the platform used to create the documents in the first place. This software is compatible with both Windows and Mac OS computers, and supports all major file formats.
FreeFlow Digital Publisher
If you need to communicate using both print and digital resources simultaneously, digital publishing software can help you save valuable time. Without this important software, you would have to set up separate, independent workflows for publishing materials in print and online.
With FreeFlow Digital Publisher, however, you can automatically prepare and route optimized files to your Xerox production printer and distribute digitally optimized versions online at the same time. You can also set this software up to accept input PDFs from customers and set up pre-flight routines for those files before digital and print delivery.
Optional Hardware Features
Alongside powerful software, Xerox’s high-volume printers come with powerful hardware features that make industry-leading quality more accessible than ever before.
You can choose from a selection of high capacity feeding options to create the most intuitive workflow possible for print process operators, and select from a range of optional finishers to create complete documents of the highest quality.
Dual advanced oversized high-capacity two-tray feeders let operators incorporate thousands of extra pages into print runs. This can upgrade the input capacity of a Xerox Versant 3100 from 1,650 pages to more than 4,000, turning it into a powerful and nearly autonomous document creation device.
To increase autonomy even further, consider the Plockmatic Pro 50 Booklet Maker. This optional finisher enables enterprises to produce saddle-stitched books of up to 200 pages. It supports a range of paper sizes and contains an optional module for rotation, bleed trim, and creasing without operator intervention.
It uses a heavy-duty staple mechanism to securely fasten pages together and allows for adjustable staple positions directly from the user interface. You can also bundle it with a trim waste conveyor that automatically handles waste, allowing for long unattended print runs without the risk of paper jams.
Simple, powerful booklet creation is just one of the many options that Xerox production printers allow for. Similar options exist for paper decurling, stacking, punching, and trimming. A custom-outfitted Xerox high-volume printer can easily produce results outside the capabilities of competing printers.
Do you want to learn more about these high-volume Xerox commercial printers? Contact us and speak to an expert today.