IPI Editor Visits In-plants in Rochester, Orlando
It’s been a very busy two weeks for me. First I traveled to Rochester, New York, to attend the Association of College and University Printers conference, and the very next week I was down in Orlando at the Inkjet Summit. On both trips, as if I weren’t busy enough, I made time to visit four local in-plants to see what was happening in their shops.
In Rochester, I took an Uber over to the Rochester City School District’s print shop and met with Supervisor Tom Licata, who proudly showed me around. This is a well-equipped in-plant, with five Konica Minolta digital presses, including a new AccurioPress 7136. (The shop switched from hometown manufacturer Xerox in 2017, with much fanfare.)
Tom Licata (left) and his staff at Rochester City School District's print shop.
The in-plant runs a pair of Epson wide-format printers and an HP Latex 365, plus a Graphtec automated cutter, to produce posters and graphics, including floor graphics. Tom has his eye on a flatbed printer too, which he hopes he can install in a back room, currently used for storage. The shop uses a two-color Hamada to print envelopes, though it also has a Neopost envelope printer and a Xante Impressia.
Tom showed me samples of the coffee mugs, book bags, window decals and apparel the shop produces with its Sawgrass Virtuoso SG800 inkjet sublimation printer and Geo Knight & Co. clamshell heat press. He makes such promo items not for the revenue, but for the value it provides to the district, as detailed in our recent story.
The amount of equipment in this three-person shop was astounding, and Tom’s staff was pretty busy during my visit, moving from one machine to the next. They produce everything the district needs: brochures, bumper stickers, calendars, forms, flyers, graduation programs, curriculum materials, even yearbooks.
The next day I traveled with the ACUP group to see Rochester Institute of Technology’s HUB Print and Postal Services operation, overseen by Mary Ellen Gauntlett.
The Anatol Volt 10-station/eight-color screen-printing press at RIT.
What stands out about this operation is its screen printing press, a rarity at in-plants. The Anatol Volt 10-station/eight-color screen-printing press was busy printing shirts during our visit. The shop generates between $200,000 and $300,000 per year from garment printing, she said, sometimes printing 1,000 shirts a day.
With 17 full-timers, plus a few dozen student workers, the HUB includes two on-campus postal centers, a mailing operation, a campus walk-up print center, and the production facility. That shop features a Xerox iGen 5, a Presstek DI press, a Roland flatbed wide-format printer, a Zund flatbed cutter, and a Kirk Rudy FireJet 4C. The staff spent plenty of time explaining the equipment to the visiting group.
A week later, a found myself in Orlando for the Inkjet Summit. I rented a car before the event and headed over to see the in-plant at Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control (MFC) division.
At Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control (MFC) division, Darnell Harris and Erica Linn flank Bob Neubauer in front of a sign printed for his visit.
The Orlando operation is one of two in-plants (the other is in Dallas) serving the aerospace and defense manufacturer. Its 14,000-sq.-ft. ground floor facility is bursting with wide-format equipment – five printers total – to satisfy the growing demand for signage, artwork, acrylic awards, name plates, and more.
Darnell Harris and Erica Linn walked me around the building to show off impressive samples of their handiwork hanging on hallway and conference room walls. The in-plant’s designers and operators thrive on creating ever more creative pieces. In fact, one of those pieces just won an In-Print 2024 Gold award.
But the shop also prints training manuals, labels, posters, log sheets, and more on its two digital toner printers. The shop also prints ceramic-chips, coasters, bag tags and other promo items on its dye-sublimation equipment. It was an impressive in-plant, and I’m glad I got the chance to visit. (See our 2021 article on this operation.)
Then I drove south to Kissimmee, Florida, to tour the Osceola School District print shop, run by Penny Mol and her staff of three. They run three digital presses: a Canon imagePRESS C9010VP, a Canon VarioPRINT DP140, and a Canon VarioPRINT DP140 Quartz, plus two ABDicks and a Multi, mostly used for NCR forms and envelopes. The shop prints yearbooks, graduation materials, manuals, resource books, envelopes, NCR forms and more.
IPI Editor Bob Neubauer (right) and Penny Mol stand with the Osceola School District print shop's Canon Colorado.
The centerpiece of the operation is its 64" Canon Colorado 1640 roll-to-roll printer, installed a year ago to give the in-plant entry into the wide-format market and boost its value. Since then the shop has printed a lot of posters and signage, and recently handled an order for 900 posters. It also has a Graphtec 9000 automated cutter which allows it to cut stickers and lettering. Penny said her biggest barrier to expanding the wide-format work her shop does is finding time to market these services more to the 60-school, 69,000-student district.
Though her student worker wasn’t in that day, Penny proudly told me how the in-plant works with Project Search, which places people with developmental disabilities into job training situations. She’s been happy with the work these students have done.
Though the four in-plants I visited were similar in some ways, they each had their own specialties and challenges. It was great to learn about them and talk with their managers, and my thanks go out to all of them for taking the time to show me around.
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 170 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
