Wide Format Imaging

Looking at enabling commerical output providers and print/design shops with the right technology to profit from the ever growing digital wide-format printing market, Xerox Corporation unveiled the Xerox 6204 Wide Format Solution, a black-and-white copier/printer at the Graphics of the Americas show earlier this year.

The unit is said to be ideal for firms transitioning from analog to digital in their workflow. Once such firm is Hanlon Architects, a Rochester, NY-based architectural firm. The company purchased the Xerox 6204 in February to help them better produce plans and designs for their client base.

?We were seeing a major trend that digital wide-format printers were becoming easier to use, smaller in size, and more economical,? said David Hanlon, president of Hanlon Architects.

Hanlon?s company had been using a competitive system that was significantly slower than the Xerox 6204. When researching a faster replacement, Hanlon Architects looked at systems that had a separate scanner and determined the products were too large to fit on their office floor. However, the Xerox 6204 system?s compact design kept it out of Hanlon?s basement and in the office, where the company?s 14 employees could quickly scan plans to their network, print multiple-page construction drawings, and copy architectural renderings.

?We specialize in designing commercial, religious and health care facilities. We had been using a plotter for many years and we needed something faster,? said Hanlon. ?When a project gets a green light, our clients expect us to immediately turn around documents. In order to keep up with the marketplace, we had to go with a higher speed product and get one in house quickly. We liked what the Xerox product had to offer because of it?s speed, small footprint area and price. Space is a big issue for us. The unit can be placed within inches of a wall, conserving work space, and printed documents are delivered from the front. It now sits right next to our designers, right in the office. With the 6204, we are able to respond to our clients? expectations quickly and produce quality documents,? he reports. He also gives thumbs up on the speed of the printer/copier. He also likes the fact that you can scan to the network all in one step. ?We are in fast paced business. We are sometimes working on 20-30 jobs at time. Whether it?s scanning blue prints or printing out new ones, with the Xerox 6204 we went from walking to running all very quickly,? says Hanlon.

?The flexibility of the Xerox 6204 allows us to take full advantage of a wide-format solution for our clients with a minimal investment in dollars and space,? he concludes.