Printer Review: Canon USA W8200PG
By Denise M. Gustavson
"You’re
limited by what you don’t know you can do,” says Bob Smith,
owner of a Sacramento, CA-based AlphaGraphics—a statement with
which most wide-format print providers would have to agree.
With nearly 82 percent of his business provided by walk-in traffic—a good portion of which comes from the Sacramento Convention Center across the street—Smith knew he needed a printer that could provide fast-turnaround and high-quality output. He had opened the shop less than a year earlier with the Canon W7200, a 36-inch, dye-based printer, but added the W8200PG in August 2004 to provide a wider (44-inch) pigment-based printer solution. “I had been reading about a lot of printers and I wasn’t able to find any products comparable to the Canon printers,” says Smith. “The 8200 also has a feature that the 7200 doesn’t have. I can run the same picture on the 7200 and the 8200, but the smoothing feature on the 8200 takes out some of the lines that you get on the 7200.”
Smith’s customers include many local federal and state offices, the local hospital, and a number of retail companies, as well as traffic from the convention center. “When someone forgets something for their booth, they walk across the street and have us print it for them,” says Smith, noting that generally it also means a very fast turnaround. AlphaGraphics has also set up a wireless network to the convention center, allowing exhibitors to send their print jobs to the network and pick them up at the shop.
According to Smith, Alpha was running samples the same day the printer was installed. “The biggest learning curve was learning to use the Fiery. We can do adjustments in the RIP—and with the 8200 we are able to vary the colors a lot easier,” says Smith.
Smith also notes that the pigment prints from the W8200 take longer to dry, which makes the staff much more cognizant about the media choices they made.
Alpha has had no issues with the printer, but Smith would like to see a fiber link, or some kind of high-speed data link, added to the printer. “One of our clients is a neurosurgeon and he needed 320 slices of the brain blown up. Each of the files were 52GB,” says Smith. “A fiber link would have helped.”
Smith would recommend the printer—and already has on several occasions. “I tell them to send an image and we run it off on the dye and pigment machine. I have yet to hear from someone that they bought something else,” says Smith.
So what sold Smith? He was “astounded by the saturation” of the 8200’s 7,680 nozzles (1,280 nozzles per color).The ease of use, for both the printer and the Fiery, also played a large role in his purchase of the printer.
“Wide-format allows us to up-sell. One customer came in for one poster and walked out with 60,” says Smith. “Wide-format is simple to do. You’re only limited by what you don’t know you can do.”
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