Small In-plant Saving Big Money with Inkjet

Peer pressure can be a powerful motivator for students — and sometimes for their school districts’ in-plants as well.

The decision to add an inkjet press at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District, in Placentia, California, was inspired, in part, by what Supervisor Robert Arauz observed happening at other California districts’ in-plants.

“The reason we added the inkjet is because, comparing myself to other school districts around the area, some of them are running curriculum … and I’ve been wanting to do that forever,” he says.

The 2.5-employee in-plant’s impressions have been decreasing, he says, and printing curriculum would not only boost impressions but save the 24,000-student district a lot of money.

The Kyocera TASKalfa Pro 15000c inkjet press at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District.

The opportunity to do it came when a science teacher approached him about the high cost of student workbooks. The district had purchased digital files of the workbooks from the publisher and then teachers would print black-and-white copies on their walk-up devices, incurring high costs and overworking the machines. She asked Arauz what the print shop could do.

After going over some numbers, Arauz determined that if his shop were to add an inkjet press and print about 34,000 workbooks in the first year, the cost would be about 90 cents per book.

“They were buying them from the publisher for $3.95 each,” he says.

He took his calculations to administrators, explained the benefits, savings, and future growth potential of printing workbooks in-house, and eventually received approval to get a Kyocera TASKalfa Pro 15000c inkjet press. The 146-ipm press was installed in July. At 19ˈ long, it required the removal of some paper racks to fit inside the facility. The in-plant did not replace any of its other digital presses, which include a Canon imagePRESS C7011 VPS, a Xerox Versant 3100, and two monochrome Xerox printers, a D136 and a D95.

Besides saving money, one huge advantage of printing workbooks with inkjet is the ability to add low-cost color to pages, to aid in the learning process.

With the new Kyocera TASKalfa Pro 15000c inkjet press at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District are (from left) Robert Arauz, print shop & warehouse supervisor; Andrea Ayala, clerk; and Greg Ribeiro, print shop technician.

“The teachers had been running [workbooks] at their sites in black and white,” Arauz points out. This made it difficult for students to distinguish the different bars in a chart, for example.

“With the color on it, the students are able to see the difference,” he says.

He acknowledges that the press does not print on gloss sheets, so colors are duller than from a toner device. But the cost is so much lower that customers have not batted an eye.

The shop has also printed theater programs on the TASKalfa Pro 15000c, and Arauz is eager to test its envelope-printing capabilities. In addition to printing for the district, the in-plant serves customers at booster clubs, the PTA, the chamber of commerce, the rotary club, the Placentia Library District, and other nonprofit groups. All are excited about the low-cost color capabilities of inkjet, he says.

A 21-year veteran of Placentia-Yorba Linda USD, Arauz also manages the warehouse. He’s seen the district’s wide-format demands increase in recent years and has added a 60" HP Designjet Z6600 printer, a 60" Mutoh Xpertjet 1641SR UV printer, and a ColDesi Compress 1200 UV flatbed printer with a 29x45" bed. It’s been used to print a lot of Coroplast and foam core signage. The shop has also added an Epilog Helix laser engraver and an Atlas USA AT20618-2 sewing machine for banners.

As of early September, the in-plant had printed 840,000 pages (8.5x11") on the TASKalfa Pro 15000c, and Arauz is more than pleased with the output.

“I’m pretty happy so far with the quality that’s coming out of it,” he says.