Latex Printer Brings New Possibilities to Kellogg

Kellogg Community College Print and Document Services had a good six-year run with its HP Latex 330 — but like most good things, it had to come to an end.

June Lewis

“It was definitely at … its end of life,” says June Lewis, process specialist at the Battle Creek, Michigan, in-plant. “We were starting to have some breakdowns and some issues with it. So, we knew that it was time to start doing some research on replacing it.”

In March, the two-person in-plant installed an HP Latex 700W. One reason Lewis picked that model was because of the limited space in her shop; since the HP 700w front loads, it can be pushed up against a wall to conserve space, she says.

“We also went with it because it required very little training time on our end, because we were already using the same front-end software that came with the new HP,” Lewis says. “We didn’t have to do anything different, which made it easier to just switch over.”

Another motivator for picking the HP Latex 700W was its white ink capabilities. The in-plant wants to do more window graphics, she says, and the white ink capabilities will allow it to do that by adding a white background layer, making colors appear more vivid.

Due to a busy graduation season (and an untimely ransomware attack on the college), the staff has not been trained yet on how to build multi-layer files to do double-sided graphics, but that will happen over the summer, Lewis says.

“Typically, what I like to do is get myself and the other staff member trained, and then do a couple of mini test projects in-house, and if all works out well then … we can move on to doing something for our Admissions office, get it out there, do a great job, then get to say that it was all done in-house,” she says.

Aside from double-sided window graphics, Lewis says the shop is utilizing the newer and faster equipment to improve applications it’s already printing, such as parking passes — which will now be easier to see through a windshield thanks to white ink — floor graphics, and window perfs.

“We haven’t changed much of what we offer, but it has made us more productive, which has helped our wide-format business grow,” Lewis says. “And it’s expanding continually.”