B2 Inkjet, Other Tech Upgrades Open Opportunities for State of Michigan

The State of Michigan’s Print and Graphic Services (PGS) division is determined to be a technology leader among public sector in-plants.

“Almost all the equipment in the shop is new within the last year and a half,” declares Kristen Hampton, director of Print and Mail Management at the Department of Technology, Management & Budget.

One of the new Ricoh Pro C9500s installed at the State of Michigan’s Print and Graphic Services (PGS) division.

Among the 2025 additions in the Lansing-based operation are two Ricoh Pro C9500s, three Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6272Ps, the Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster, an IBIS Smart-binder SB-2, and the centerpiece: a Ricoh Pro Z75 sheet-fed inkjet press.

An early adopter of inkjet with its 2019 installation of a Ricoh Pro VC40000 continuous-feed press and a Xerox Brenva HD, the 65-employee, $21.5 million operation has now taken the next step into inkjet by adding the B2-size Pro Z75, an aqueous pigment, automatic perfecting press that prints 4,500 sph.

Kristen Hampton

“We were looking for a B2 size because we really wanted to be able to compete a little more with the offset world,” explains Hampton. The in-plant also added a pallet feeder “so that we can run it really like an offset press,” she says.

Hampton plans to keep the Z75 very busy with print-on-demand work and even use it to bring outsourced jobs back in-house.

“There’s work we’re sending out right now that we just don’t have the capacity for,” she says. “We’re hoping to be able to insource some of that work back in.”

The new Ricoh Pro Z75 sheet-fed inkjet press.

Hampton is extremely pleased with the quality of the Z75’s printing and its ability to run a variety of stocks. That in itself is a big step up from the Brenva, she notes, which was limited in the stocks it could print on. As a result, the in-plant was mostly using it to print business cards.

“We really needed to upgrade from that machine,” Hampton says.

Attending the 2023 Inkjet Summit was a big help in educating her about the latest inkjet innovations, she says.

The Ricoh Pro VC40000 continuous-feed inkjet press will continue to handle transactional printing.

“I got lots of great information from people, and the discussions were immensely helpful,” she says.

Accompanying the new inkjet press is an IBIS Smart-binder SB-2, which will bind pages coming off the Z75 to create booklets. PGS is retaining its Ricoh Pro VC40000 continuous-feed inkjet press to handle transactional printing.

Also recently installed in the in-plant’s 95,000-sq.-ft. facility are a pair of Ricoh Pro C9500s, which replace a Xerox iGen. One was installed with an in-line bookletmaker and both have GBC punching.

“In-line punching has been huge,” Hampton says. “We do a lot of training materials. Also, the quality is really phenomenal. It runs a variety of stocks as well.”

PGS added the Ricoh Auto Color Adjuster to speed up color calibration for the C9500s, the VC40000, and the Z75.

“That is an amazing tool,” Hampton praises. Its ability to create ICC profiles that match the color of samples printed on another digital press will be very handy, she says, such as when a customer orders a small run of a brochure “and then next time they order it, they’re going to want 20,000 … that’s when it’s really going to come into play.”

One of three new Konica Minolta AccurioPress 6272Ps at the in-plant.

The shop has also added OneVision software to check customer files and fix formatting, color, image resolution, bleeds, and more to produce print-ready files.

“It’s a huge time savings,” she says.

A new MBM Aerocut cutter has made business card cutting much simpler than using a guillotine cutter, she adds.

“We do business cards daily,” Hampton notes. “All the state’s business cards have to come through us.”

All of these recent upgrades have improved the quality of the in-plant’s work, and customers have noticed.

“They’re pleased with the color quality. It’s a vast improvement from what we had been producing,” Hampton says. “And we’re able to provide it at no cost increase to our customers.”