New Color Printer at Bloomsburg

Bloomsburg University Printing Services is a busy in-plant, printing everything from letterhead and labels to invitations, marketing brochures and programs for sporting events and concerts. The shop prints all of the Bloomsburg, Pa.-based college's materials, since there are few outside printers in this rural area. To help it in this task, the in-plant recently installed a Lanier C720s Pro color printer.

“It runs cardstock like you wouldn't believe,” enthuses Tom Patacconi, manager of the seven-employee in-plant.

Printing 100 pages per minute, the 1,200-dpi printer has cut down on the amount of work the in-plant has to do. An inline Plockmatic bookletmaker lets the shop produce booklets without operator intervention.

“We do a booklet for just about every event,” Patacconi says. "There's no labor to it."

This wasn't the case with the shop's previous Canon color printer, since the Plockamtic couldn't be attached to it, forcing employees to use up more time for every booklet job.

Patacconi says the C720s Pro is easy to program and prints up to 13x19˝; the previous printer could only print up to 11x17˝.

Since the university is a state agency, Patacconi says, the in-plant is restricted to printing materials just for the university and can't insource from local businesses to raise additional revenue. However, the university is looking to increase enrollment by 1,000 next year, so he anticipates an increase in mailings and related recruitment materials.

In the next year or so, Patacconi says, the in-plant may be moving into a new building.

“They will probably build a new shop,” Patacconi reveals. “They are going to add a new three-story building, and the best thing is to put us on the ground floor.”

Plans for the new administration building don't currently include a print shop, but they aren't finalized and Patacconi is lobbying for it. He and the administration are whittling down their options.

Next year, Patacconi says, the in-plant will likely replace another piece of equipment as it usually makes one capital investment each year to make sure it stays ahead of the curve.