We will be posting a series of videos featuring Andy Scherz, Director of Product Marketing. In these informal videos, Andy will be covering where Line Matrix printers fit in mission critical environments as well as key differentiators between each of the Printronix line printer models.
Line Matrix Printers in Mission Critical Environments - Zero Tear Models
(part 6)
|
 Andy Scherz
Director of Product Marketing |
P7000 Zero Tear Cartridge Line Matrix Printer
Now finally we have the configuration here that is very similar to this model. This model is identical to this model, but you're going to notice one distinct difference here. The tractors are here on this model here, it's actually pulling the paper. This particular model, the tractors are actually on an assembly that sits below the printer and above the stand that actually moves the tractors in the lower location and pushes the paper through. Now this has the advantage of basically allowing me to get one page at a time without any forms waste in between. So if I have a form, and it's very important that I can keep every single form, maybe they are numbered or sequenced or they are high-value forms just physically expensive, and I don't want to have any waste in between grabbing print jobs, this configuration is ideal, offering the ability to print one form at a time and tear it off.
Now, in contrast, the pull tractor system does have the disadvantage that it at the end of the print job I need to at least leave one sheet still in here in the tractors. There is a major reason why we do that. The two tractor system with the pull enables us to handle very difficult forms okay? So for example they may be physically large, or they might have tricky attributes like this particular form has peel off stickers, and this sticker if we have to be very careful how we handle it, tends to make it thick, it doesn't want to feed through the printer well, or we may even have multipart forms, again if we have a trucking depot, and I'm going to print a bill of lading, I might need to send a copy to my accounting department, have a copy for my file records, have a copy out to production, a copy taken with a truck. The net is you have a high copy count. This becomes a difficult form to feed, but with the pull tractor system we have no problem pulling the media through the printer.
We will be posting a series of videos featuring Andy Scherz, Director of Product Marketing. In these informal videos, Andy will be covering where Line Matrix printers fit in mission critical environments as well as key differentiators between each of the Printronix line printer models.
Line Matrix Printers in Mission Critical Environments - Quiet Cabinet Models
(part 5)
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Andy Scherz
Director of Product Marketing |
P7000 Quiet Cabinet Cartridge Line Matrix Printer
So what we're looking at here would be what we call our Quiet Cabinet model. And this model is ideal for two particular attributes, one, it's very quiet, what happens is, this is actually a box designed to keep the sound in, it's all lined with foam. Even the door is lined with foam. It's got a seal just like on a refrigerator magnet that keeps all the sound inside here. So this is an ideal printer to put right next to where you might have people working say in an office environment or in a bank where the acoustics might be really important.
It has a second attribute that is very good, which is, it's designed for really printing a very large print job in one big batch, okay? So you have a big place you can put the storage paper in front, at the back of the printer we have a whole area where the paper can stack We have chains and guides that will actually guide the output stack into one tall neat output, so that this printer could very easily have an entire full box of paper put in, print a whole box, the box will be sitting in the waiting for you when you get it in one orderly stack, okay? Very good for high-end throughput applications, so this printer would usually be used anytime you need really the utmost in quietness or you're printing a very large volume of applications.
And in fact a testament to the overall reliability of these printers is, I have seen these models actually print where they will open up a gang plank coming out of the front, with stacks 5000 sheets high all daisy chained together, and they will slide this paper into this printer, this printer will run from eight o'clock in the morning until the end of the shift of the day without any break, and they will just print thousands and thousands sheets through the printer with no harm to the printer whatsoever.
Printronix Launches World's First PostScript® and PDF® Line Matrix Printer
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Randy Eisenbach
Chief Executive Officer |
Today Printronix announces the availability in all markets the world’s first PostScript® and PDF® line matrix printer. The OpenPrint™ P7000HD is compatible with today’s modern enterprise resource planning (ERP) environments, including Oracle®, SAP®, Linux® and Windows®. This marks the first time that a high volume, mission critical printer technology has been brought to market combining the flexibility and enhanced graphic performance of PostScript and PDFwith the unmatched reliability, the lowest cost of printing and unique environmental advantages of line matrix.
The easy and instant connectivity of PostScript and PDF files enables IT administrators to quickly deploy new forms and business documents to Printronix line matrix printers throughout ERP enterprise operations. OpenPrint technology produces scannable bar codes, high quality text and fonts from six point to poster size within the printer resulting in enhanced form readability and utility.
We invite you to learn more about this new printer family at www.printronix.com.
We will be posting a series of videos featuring Andy Scherz, Director of Product Marketing. In these informal videos, Andy will be covering where Line Matrix printers fit in mission critical environments as well as key differentiators between each of the Printronix line printer models.
Line Matrix Printers and the Environment
(part 4)
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Andy Scherz
Director of Product Marketing |
In this video we discuss the environmental advantages of line matrix printers compared to laser printers.
We are as this world becoming more and more conscious about our environmental footprint. This is gaining an important and growing concern for all businesses is really, what is the green footprint left by the piece of equipment here? And in this regard, this line printer is actually really one of the greenest technologies you can use for printing. Of course, it's an ENERGY STAR device, which means that in its standby mode it is using only a fraction of electricity consistent with the ever tightening ENERGY STAR standards.
But there are a lot of pieces of equipment today that are becoming ENERGY STAR certified and they are focusing on that standby power reduction. But what we can't really do is focus on the operating. Now I know that this looks like a fairly large piece of equipment and sort of your mind may think it uses a lot of electricity, but in reality it actually uses only a very light load of electricity, maybe let's say somewhere on the order of magnitude when it's printing about 350 watts, something like maybe two light bulbs if you will. In contrast, a relatively small cut sheet laser printer that looks like it's kind of sleek and energy-efficient is actually gobbling power at almost 70% higher rate.
The problem is the cut sheet laser printer uses heat and pressure and things to ionize and fuse the image that actually draws a pretty astounding amount of energy to print every single image, so when you start comparing a 70% increase of one technology over the other, over the life of the product, that turns out to be a pretty substantial difference in terms of the total energy consumed for the year.
The second thing is that we have to think about is the amount of waste that you physically produce okay? When you look at the printer and I've shown you the ribbon, we have a cartridge that's basically a plastic box and some inked fabric and when it's expended you're really not having that much of a problem disposing of this item. In contrast, a cut sheet laser printer has a assembly more like this, now suddenly we're into all kinds of issues here. We've got mixed materials that are not suitable for recycling, we got metals, we've got plastics, we've got different types of plastics, there's still always an amount of unused, toner powder in here which is a fine particulate , and is a lung irritant hazard that we have to the careful that it doesn't get out. Some of these will have drums with various materials in the drums. This is a pretty bulky and complex and unpleasant thing to be discarded.
Now when I talked again about this being 30,000 pages and oftentimes this only being 10,000 pages, it suddenly becomes a proposition of saying I'm going to replace one of these for every three of these guys, suddenly I have a big disposable problem on consumable end. As bad as that might sound, we have an even bigger problem which is disposing of the equipment itself, so. In a typical environment a cut sheet laser printer when it's really put into a business-critical application may have a life of only one to three years, okay, they are generally plastic printers with lots of parts that rely on precise friction and rubber and things that are fairly fragile, and in a demanding cycle when you're printing 100,000 pages a month, high volumes a million pages a year, it's not going to be uncommon for that printer to be dead after two years okay? Or, a product like this could easily last 10, 15 years; we've had them lasting as long as 25 years out in customer applications. You take a printer that's going to last let's say 20 years versus the one that lasts two years, in the lifetime you might have one of these printers versus 10 of these cut sheet laser printers that have to be somehow disposed of, and when you are disposing of an actual print mechanism now you've got even more e-waste issues going on there and the differential becomes quite huge.
But let's even talk more specifically, forget about the waste of the mechanism, forget about the energy savings, all important things. How about the paper itself? Whenever we talk about printing, and we talk about the environment, the paper that we use becomes very important. One of the key benefits of a line printer is that it can survive with very highly recyclable content paper okay? But that paper provides two major challenges for anybody trying to use more of an office MFP or cut sheet laser printer product. The first problem is that recycled paper usually has a lot more particulates in it, you know, wood chips and things like this. It's not as pure of a paper, and that impurity wears down the mechanism, okay. So you start finding that your drums and things in the laser printer start suffering from premature wear because of the paper itself. That's if you can feed it at all, okay? The second attribute of recycled paper is that it can very often be quite limp, or intentionally people will pick a very light weight paper just to conserve the amount of paper that is actually being used in the printing process, and suddenly this light limp paper, can't feed through the cut sheet mechanism and then will lead to jams and everything and ultimately you won't even try to use it, so that cut sheet laser printer requires fairly stiff, fairly refined, fairly new content paper versus the line printer that can print on virtually anything. So suddenly you can find it's not uncommon to find these printers printing with paper that just is unimaginably poor in terms of what you think of quality of paper, it's not that bright white, it's got a lot of chips in it, it's very limp , but this guy can chug along all day long without any problems, and that really gives it between the e-waste, the longevity of the mechanism, the energy savings and the ability to use highly recyclable content, it really makes this the greenest technology for printing.
See also:
Printronix P7000 Cartridge Line Matrix Printer Environmental Advantages
We will be posting a series of videos featuring Andy Scherz, Director of Product Marketing. In these informal videos, Andy will be covering where Line Matrix printers fit in mission critical environments as well as key differentiators between each of the Printronix line printer models.
Pedestal Line Matrix Printers
(part 3)
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Andy Scherz
Director of Product Marketing |
Printronix P7000 Pedestal Line Matrix Printers
So this printer is a little bit of a smaller form factor, and again going back to the shuttle I showed, and talking about the reliability, there is no actual difference in the print mechanism itself. So it has the same place the shuttle resides under this cover here, the single tractor, same drive mechanism. Everything is basically identical, okay, except it's just in a smaller form factor. The ideal factor for this smaller unit is that I can now get the paper right out the back, so unlike the cabinet where I have to get behind and open a door and take the output out, I can just reach over and just grab it.
It's a smaller footprint and can fit in more open areas. This particular model actually has the input path enclosed in a quiet pedestal configuration. What this means is that the source paper goes in here, and I have a small little door that makes it silent. And the reason for this is that these printers are moving very fast and actually what's interesting is they are going so fast that just the raw pulling of the paper makes a fair amount of sound, and by enclosing this source paper, we can keep a lot of that sound out.
Now this factor can be even more versatile and more convenient. So I can just unscrew this latch and remove it, flip up this guide here, and now I've got my paper coming out the top. So, if we were sitting here and I have a maybe shorter print run, so for example every truck that comes into my truck depot I need three sheets of paper, that's it for that particular track, this can be configured to be very convenient for me to get my three sheets out, tear them off and go. Okay, and I don't have a, I have just a maximum amount of convenience, so if I'm sitting at a desk and want to be able to reach out and grab the output like that. So this form factor is used in areas where space is a constraint, or we have just a need for quicker access to forms, but overall durability, speed and performance, it’s the same as its cabinet brethren.
We will be posting a series of videos featuring Andy Scherz, Director of Product Marketing. In these informal videos, Andy will be covering where Line Matrix printers fit in mission critical environments as well as key differentiators between each of the Printronix line printer models.
Line Matrix Printers in Mission Critical Environments
(part 2)
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Andy Scherz
Director of Product Marketing |
So let him give you a concrete example of a real application where this ultra-reliability is so important, that kind of encapsulates the things we've been talking about here. This is a form that would be printed at a paper mill; this is actually used to label a 1095lb roll of paper. The big physical piece of raw paper before the paper has been cut into either office supplies or the news print, or magazine print or whatever it's going to be used for. Now what happens is that this label has to be applied right at the end of the paper production process. Because one of the critical things is, every roll of paper after it is produced has to be weighed, and that weight and length has to be labeled right then and there at the end of the paper machine.
A paper mill machine, if anybody has not seen this, is about $500 million machine, that is unbelievably long, and what happens is at the start of that machine you actually have ground up trees, and water and pulp all being dumped into a big liquid vat, and as this goes through this machine, on the output side comes out completely clean dry paper ready to be used. Okay, and somewhere between is a mixture of liquids and in less liquids, and less and less and finally you have the paper. This machine cannot be stopped. You can imagine if you stop this machine, this whole thing, all this paper that's in transit all in the drying process, just completely becomes a nightmare and takes then days to clean the thing out before it can be ready to start again. Suffice to say if you have a piece of equipment as a provider that brings that machine to a halt, that's probably the last day your piece of equipment is allowed in that plant.
So if you look at the output of the paper mill machine, you will see this giant machine and out come these rolls. The rolls themselves are so physically large they can only store a few rules before these things get moved off to storage. But again, as I pointed out, they have to be weighed, labeled and everything before they can be moved. So you have a very small area with almost no tolerance for downtime. If that printer stops working, it's almost an immediate crisis because you've got to get the product moving away before you stop that machine. That's when you need, that's a business-critical application. That is not, "hey we've got Jam no big deal we're gonna come back to it tomorrow, we'll get these labels printed ", this is like, "this has to be working right this instant", and hence, people will pay a great premium for a machine that's up to the task of doing that kind of a job.
You can find out more about Printronix line matrix printers on our web site www.printronix.com.
We will be posting a series of videos featuring Andy Scherz, Director of Product Marketing. In these informal videos, Andy will be covering where Line Matrix printers fit in mission critical environments as well as key differentiators between each of the Printronix line printer models.
Line Matrix Printers in Mission Critical Environments
(Part 1)
|
Andy Scherz
Director of Product Marketing |
Hi my name is Andy Schertz, I'm the Director of Product Marketing here at Printronix and today I am going to talk to us a little about line printers.
And to start off with, I think it's important that we understand why they are called line printers and what's at the core of these mechanisms. So let me show you the actual print mechanism that defines a line printer. This is actually the print shuttle, and is the backbone of the line printer that we use today. And, as you might be able to see just watching this is actually a fairly heavy device. It's not that easy to pick up. This is the backbone of the printer, and is what defines and creates such a high reliability device.
The shuttle mechanism is all made of cast iron steel cast aluminum, cast part steel, and very high reliability components, that really are impervious to operating in high humidity, ultra-dry conditions, hot conditions, cold conditions. It really doesn't care if there is dust or contaminates out there, and it really doesn't care if you throw thousands and thousands of pages at it. It would not be uncommon for a printer like this to print a million pages in a year without any trouble.
And this is at the center of the line printer, it's called a line printer because it actually prints an entire row of dots, and it's a little bit difficult to see but these are all hammers that will provide one entire row of dots per stroke, and then as the paper moves up, it will actually paint an image of dots down the page. It's very robust technology.
Now, this mechanism is used in every single line printer that we have, okay. So what defines it is the number of hammers on the print mechanism itself. If you put a fewer hammers you create a slower mechanism. If you put more hammers, this happens to be a 2000 line per minute, you get a high-speed mechanism. The product is basically grouped into four different speeds; 500 LPM, 1000 LPM, 1500 LPM and 2000.All of them use the same robust mechanism. Of course the higher speed will have more hammers, has a bigger power supply because it will take more energy to move paper that fast and to move all of those hammers at same time, and some additional electronics on the controller, but fundamentally the electronics are completely the same, and the mechanism is completely the same between these guys. So if we go down to a 500 line per minute printer we're not in any way reducing the quality of the printer or reducing reliability, were just basically, it's not going to have the same throughput.
So the question becomes, why is this mechanism so valuable, why is the super rugged ultra-duty cycle mechanism so valuable in the business enterprise? That's because these printers are targeted at the business-critical applications. Now let me explain what a business-critical application means. Probably many of us are familiar with printing we maybe print to our office MFP printer a memo that we think we might want to have on file or something like that. But, if we get there and the copier is jammed and it didn't really print, you know, maybe I don't really need to print it, maybe I'll look at it on my computer screen, or I will print it tomorrow or something like that.
That's not true with every type of form that's used in the business environment. So for example if I'm loading valuable merchandise on a truck, and I'm going to let this truck leave with that merchandise I will want a record of what I've just put on there, so I just put on $100,000 of merchandise which is comprised of these 50 items, the truck drivers going to be taking possession of these items. He's going to want to know what he's taking on because ultimately now he's going to be responsible for it until it gets to the next spot. We're going to have a bill of lading which documents very precisely what goes onto that truck, and we all need to agree that that's what's in there. If that document doesn't print, I'm not going to let that truck go, and if that document doesn't print, that truck driver isn't it those goods, and we are stuck. Okay, now when we are stuck that means suddenly my customer is not going to get the products and I'm not getting paid, the truck driver's not arriving, everything about the business process stops.
In that environment, what is most important is that you just absolutely avoid that downtime, and the way to avoid that downtime is you have is ultra-robust mechanism that can print every day, over and over again with no forms waste and that's why this printer remains such a viable part of the business chain of goods today, because of the business-critical printing that really cannot tolerate downtime.
We will be posting the second half of Andy's discussion on Friday.
One of the most insightful aspects of my job as Director of Marketing Communications for Printronix is the opportunity to talk to our customers – both the channel partners whom we work directly with and also their end user clients.
In a recent discussion with Matt Connell, VP of Service for IntegraServ, I was incredibly impressed with this channel partner’s capability to focus the resources across both our companies to quickly resolve what could have been a significant customer satisfaction problem. Yes I did say problem. But thanks to Matt’s great leadership, and the quick response by the Printronix technical support services team, the end user was quick to sing our praise when I happened to pay him a call. At the request of the end user customer I interviewed and in respect to their company policy, I am not able to disclose specific name of the individual interviewed or the name of the business. That said this leading independent distributor of more than 60,000 home improvement products across the US and Canada is happy for me to share their story and gave a hearty endorsement for the new Printronix P7000 cartridge line matrix printer.
Great Resource Deployment, Service and Bottom Line Savings – a P7000 Cartridge success story
Line matrix printers run this company’s five distribution and warehousing facilities, daily moving an average of $4 to 5 million dollars of goods to their retail customers. With a Printronix relationship spanning over 20 years I was told line matrix printers are vitally important to running their business, printing applications such as: shipping documents, price stickers, bills of lading and manifests. As their ecommerce business continued to grow, newer printers were needed that could support the tailored, specific invoicing requirements of their customers. There was also a need to support bar code and expanded fonts. In December 2010 they decided to retire their older Printronix 9012s and IBM 6262 band printers, in all company locations. This customer confirmed that the Printronix line matrix printer provided the improved and variety of functionality demanded by their ever changing distribution environment. The company’s management team opted to go with the latest technology, the Printronix P7000 cartridge line matrix printer.
Soon after installation the customer reported some issues due to ribbon jam. Matt Connell responded quickly and assembled the right team to travel to the sites, assess the issue and to quickly deploy a solution. The customer stated that within two weeks the problem was resolved across each of their six installation locations, praising Matt and the Printronix service team for ensuring all printers were operating properly. This customer stated that he couldn’t have been happier with the way Printronix and IntegraServ responded to a problem.
As a result of upgrading to the new P7000 cartridge printers, the customer cites the following benefits gained to their business during the last 9 months in operation:
- Improved productivity
- Bar code support is a major benefit to ensure the right pick orders make it to the right distribution truck. Lots of small items are pulled and aggregated in very large totes that move along the warehouse conveyor line. The conveyor scans the bar code and directs the tote to the proper load staging area.
- Ease of use and reduced IT Support
- Even though their IT techs were pretty quick swapping out spools on the earlier printer models, the new cartridges ribbons are easier to change without the mess of getting ink on their hands.
- Lower consumable costs
- Customer verified they are benefiting from a 30% or more savings weekly on ribbon consumption due to the conversion to cartridge from spool.
- Other bottom line savings
- This customer went on to state that expense management continues to be very important in their business to remain competitive in today’s retail business environment. They had earlier experienced that re-inked spool ribbons didn’t work and didn’t save them money in the long run. Thus, their reason to always purchase Printronix genuine consumables. They are very happy with the performance of the Extended Life Cartridge with the roll out of their new P7000 printers and the associated reduced labor and cost savings minimally estimated at a 30% improvement.
We are very excited to announce our company pages are now live on Google +.
Printronix has been watching the Google+ platform emerge with great excitement, reading lots of great posts from our customers and business partners, many of whom have already joined the fray.
We would love to connect with you on Google + - there will be lots going on, so feel free to add our page to your circles. We have created a page for Printronix and a page for TallyGenicom.
We recently had the opportunity to talk to Terry Moore, System/SharePoint Admin for World Kitchen. In this blog we share insights on how this leading manufacturer and distributor of consumer goods has saved thousands of dollars each month, improved operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.
For World Kitchen, customer satisfaction depends on accurate data that is critical to efficient inventory management and supply chain operations which is encoded on bar code labels. Each year, the company produces millions of 4”x 6” and 4” x 8” bar code shipping labels that contain customers’ parcel information, including shipping addresses and purchase order numbers. Unreadable bar codes in World Kitchen’s supply chain results in operational inefficiency and higher operational costs due to refused shipments, costly reshipments and charge-backs. Unscannable bar codes were causing costly compliance fees, shipping delays and operation downtime.
Costly compliance fines and the resolve to end inefficiency throughout shipping operations prompted the need for the integrated Printronix Thermal Printer with an Online Data Validation (ODV™) combination. The Printronix T5000r ENERGY STAR ThermaLine thermal bar code printers with ODV verify that printed bar code labels are 100 percent machine readable, 100 percent of the time. As a result of adopting this integrated solution, World Kitchen was able to effectively eliminate the problem and has saved the company, thousands of dollars a year in compliance fines alone for each of the six years they have been in use.
Printronix recently created a video which explains how the T5000r ENERGY STAR ThermaLine and SmartLine SLT5000r RFID printers fitted with the ODV option can help eliminate bar code compliance fines in the supply chain.
You can read more about World Kitchen in our case study area.