Copiers from the early 90's!!!

For Your Office

In selecting a copier, the key to achieving efficiency in your office is to thoroughly analyze both your office procedures and new technological advancements. What’s your current and future volume need? What special features do you require? How important is the machine’s speed, image quality? What’s the reputation of the vendor?

Most landscape architects will find their copier needs in the medium volume, table-top range. A medium volume copier will produce 15,000 to 50,000 copies a month and 20 to 24 copies a minute. Such options and features available are reduction, enlargement, semi-automatic feeding, sorting and the ability to produce adhesive-backed sheets. LAs usually find a zoom reduction handy, enabling a wider variety of reproduction sizes. A two-page separation for books and an automatic exposure system controlling light and darkness is also a plus.

If you are a larger firm, perhaps a higher efficiency, higher volume copier, producing 50,000 to 100,000 copies a month and 50 to 100 a minute would be better. This is where the analysis of your needs is important. Would one of these machines be enough? Or should you have other copiers for less complex functions such as just basic copying leaving the higher-volume copier free for more complex jobs?

To determine which features are best for your office, study the percentage of use. For example, a document positioner is convenient if most copies are made from only a few originals or from originals of various sizes. The positioner offers the benefit of automatic feed where an original is copied without pushing any buttons. When several copies of multi-page originals are required, a recirculating feeder-type feature is most often recommended.

While shopping, here are some terms you may find helpful to know prior to seeing the salesperson:

Automatic Document Feeder – holds a stack of originals and feeds them automatically.

Automatic Duplexing – produces two-sided copies automatically; user does not have to manually reload copies.

Fiber Optics – some copiers transmit light to form an image with such optics which are not as expensive to manufacture as optical lenses and thus allow for producing smaller sizes copiers.

Instant-On – copier requires no warm-up time.

Platen – essentially, this is the exposure glass that original material is placed on to be copied. There are two types of platens, moving and stationary. Moving platens are usually the slower type.

Sheet Bypass – a side opening into which copying materials may be hand-fed allowing operator to copy onto a sheet of paper, transparency or the like without having to load
them into the paper cassette.

Stream Feeder – an attachment that pulls originals from the operator’s hands over the exposure glass; copying is done while the original is passing over the glass a section at a
time.

Universal Cassette Tray – these trays can be adjusted by the user to accommodate a variety of paper sizes.

 

A Copiers Expense

 

The initial investment for a medium-volume copier is between $4000 and $10,000 and for a high-volume about $12,000 to $60,000. Along with selecting a copier, you must also decide whether to make the transaction on a purchase, rent or lease basis. On the surface, the least costly method is an outright purchase. But buying also means choosing equipment that will be suitable and durable for many years. What if you should expand or the features become obsolete in the future? Renting is the most expensive approach, and the rarest, but its edge is that equipment can be upgraded and service is a responsibility that the lessor takes care of. However, rental copiers are not necessarily new units.

Leasing is cheaper than a purchase and requires no initial investment nor does it tie up capital. It is similar to rental with monthly payments, but the lease must be renewed at a specified time or the machine purchased.

However, beyond this, one should look at the cost per copy, a figure that considers true overall expense by including cost of paper, toner, developer and service. One way to calculate cost per copy when purchasing is to depreciate the retail price over a five-year period at your sized volume copier. The cost of a service contract is added by dividing its suggested price by the copying; volume, thus achieving cost per copy.

You can calculate the cost of supplies by taking the amount to be used in a year by a machine. For example, a yearly volume of 24,000 copies might mean the purchase of four pounds of toner, since it will yield about 7600 copies per pound. Therefore the cost per pound is divided into 7600 to achieve a per copy rate.

 

Copier Supplies

 

What constitutes copier supplies? Certain components require periodic replacement namely the photoreceptor, fuser rollers, cleaning blades, brushes and filters. Consumable items that must be replenished are toner, developer, fuser oil and paper.

Photoreceptor – a primary element in the electrostatic imaging process, which acts as the intermediary to capture an image that it develops with toner and then transfers to plain paper. Selenium, cadmium sulfide, zinc oxide and organic and organic are the four most common kinds.

Toner – either liquid or dry, develops the latent image on the photoreceptor with a pigment or toner and developer or carrier. Consists of meltable resin and usually carbon black pigment. One of the most purchased items next to paper.

Fuser Roller & Oil —fixes the toner to the paper. Oil, either mineral or silicon, is applied to prevent the toner offset from the paper to the surface of the rollers.

Cleaning Blades – a polymer, fur, nylon or teflon blade scrapes excess toner from the surface of the photoreceptor.

Filter Bags – collect excess toner from the blade.

What would an article about office copiers be without a basic description of the process? As follows: High intensity light is used to expose the surface of an original document. The light is absorbed by image areas and reflected by the non-image areas. The reflected image is passed through a series of mirrors and lenses to the charged surface of an intermediary or photoreceptor. The image is developed with toner, transferred to plain paper and fused to the paper surface with heat and/or pressure.

What makes for efficient use of a copier? Analyzing your needs, figuring your budget, understanding some of the key components and processes and routine maintenance.

The appear to have the labels reversed. The Kodak Ektaprint picture is labeled as the Canon NP 270 and vice verse.

Old Glory:

Good catch!! Do you remember having to lug those paper trays around for every demo? What a pain the butt that was, you had to take the paper trays out of the machine, the by-pass tray, the exit tray, the document feeder tray. It was a known fact that I was soley responsbible for damaging many paper trays and doc feeder trays in the eighties.

Broken Trays are nothing compared to bent main frames caused by collapsing stairclimber carts. You know, the ones that would conveniently fold up as you pushed them into your stationwagon or van. You know, the ones that would occassionally decide to collapse without warning.

I had a Nissan hatchback in the eighties, and the typical copier cart of the day was a gurney and yes for those of you who were not in the business at the time it was the same type of gurney that was used with ambulances. One day, I forgot to close the hatchback all the way and since the Nissan was a stick shift I would have a tendency for a quick start, yup the quick start open the hatchback and the gurney with the copier was lying in the middle of the road in Princeton, NJ. No damage, just very embarrassing!!!