Advice please folks!

[leetaylor]

Hi Everyone.

I'm after a bit of advice regarding a certain job we have to print on a very regular basis.

The job is this:

Many (up to 100) volumes of mono pages, ranging from 100 to 600 pages, printed double sided. We print these with no problems on our Xerox 4110 mono device.

So far so good - now the tricky bit!

Each of the volumes has to have tabbed dividers inserted (these are 5 part reverse Xerox dividers). The dividers each have to have some text printed on them, which the client just supplies as a text file.

Our 4110 printer has no Fiery or Creo, just the Xerox internal RIP which is VERY limited in what it will do.

So at the moment I have an InDesign template that I created and I manually copy and paste the client's text into it, and then print the tabbed dividers separately. We then spend ages (sometimes hours upon hours) manually inserting the tabbed dividers into the printed volumes. Currently, our client puts a blank page with a black strip down the right hand edge where the tab has to be inserted, to help us locate it.

We are increasingly spending more and more time doing this job so we have started looking at an alternative method.

Xerox have offered us this:

Exchange our 4110 for a 4127 with a Xerox FreeFlow RIP and FreeFlow Print Server software.

We are told this hardware / software will enable us to print and insert the tabbed dividers at the same time as printing the rest of the document.

This all sounds VERY IMPRESSIVE and we are off to a demonstration next week.

I was just wondering if you Guys are faced with similar jobs and how do you go about them?

I have many technical questions for Xerox, such as 1. How does the text from the client's text file get onto the correct tab. 2. What happens if only 2 or 3 tabs are required in a volume (what happens to the rest of the set?) 3. How easy is the software to learn, and how steep is the learning curve?

If any of you Guys have any info on this sort of work, or the Xerox FreeFlow RIP or FreeFlow Print Server software, I would be very grateful.

Regards.

Lee.

Sorry for the long post too!!

 

[SES]

How valuable is your time? If you're spending hours upon hours manually inserting tabs into these books and that time could better be spent, then I believe it's worth it to make the change.

My goal is to do as little manual work as possible–that is, after all, why we have machines.

 

[leetaylor]

How valuable is your time? If you're spending hours upon hours manually inserting tabs into these books and that time could better be spent, then I believe it's worth it to make the change.

My goal is to do as little manual work as possible–that is, after all, why we have machines.

Absolutely, I agree 100%.

Just wondered if anyone was currently doing this sort of work and how they went about it?

 

[X33]

The FreeFlow Print Server solution will resolve this tab issue. Xerox has done this for many years since the 90s with DocuTechs, DocuPrints, Nuveras and DocuColors.

1. The new software versions have a TAB Wizard to print the text onto the TAB
2. If only 3 tabs are needed, the sw will discard the other 2 in a separate tray
3. Very easy to use; any operator can do it

 

[leetaylor]

The FreeFlow Print Server solution will resolve this tab issue. Xerox has done this for many years since the 90s with DocuTechs, DocuPrints, Nuveras and DocuColors.

1. The new software versions have a TAB Wizard to print the text onto the TAB
2. If only 3 tabs are needed, the sw will discard the other 2 in a separate tray
3. Very easy to use; any operator can do it

This sounds great (thanks for the reply).

Any other info on The FreeFlow Print Server solution would be VERY MUCH appreciated.

Regards.

Lee.

 

[billyinlasvegas]

I'm not familiar with the 4110 but if there's any way to program exceptions and run ordered stock on this machine you should be able to do tabs without any upgrade.

 

[leetaylor]

I'm not familiar with the 4110 but if there's any way to program exceptions and run ordered stock on this machine you should be able to do tabs without any upgrade.

Thanks billyinlasvegas for the reply.

I don't think it's the 4110 that's the problem, but the fact that we haven't got an external RIP, just the bustled controller.

Not really sure what you mean by "programming exceptions" and running "ordered stock"?

 

[Creative-1]

We do this kind of work all the time. I don't believe the bustled rip is robust enough to do that kind of work. We use Oce and Xerox and both have tab functionality in the rips, like the tab wizard that was mentioned. Having the tabs printed and inserted would make that job run so much quicker and less room for error too.

 

[leetaylor]

Many thanks for the reply Creative-1!

What Printer / RIP configuration are you using?

 

[Creative-1]

We run Oce 2110's with their proprietary RIP (which isn't very good to be honest), but it works well with tabs. We looked at the Xerox 4110 before we decided on Oce, but the tab handling didn't seem very good. I believe all tabs had to go through the bypass (unless they've changed that now). We run the Xerox 250 with the Fiery EXP 250, we don't do a lot of tabs on it, but we can do what you're trying to do. Before Oce, we ran Canon Imagerunner 105's with Fiery rips, which also handled tabs well. With the Oce's and Canon's, we define the tab copy and insert location through the driver settings and then rip the job. It's really easy. I don't recommend Oce, but have you looked at any of the Canon printers? When is the lease up on your Xerox? Would it make sense financially to trade in now?

 

[sweatyclimber]

I would play some more w/ the rip you have... the embeded rip is a fiery x3e so it should be able to run the tabs for you. Sounds like the X- rep is more interested in a new sale then support.... understandable, but for your bottom line, I'd get the current fiery to work.

 

[Beaker]

Thanks billyinlasvegas for the reply.

I don't think it's the 4110 that's the problem, but the fact that we haven't got an external RIP, just the bustled controller.

Not really sure what you mean by "programming exceptions" and running "ordered stock"?

If you click the 'special pages' tab on the poscript driver when printing it will give you the option to insert pages,
just select the tray where the tabbed stock is (bypass tray?) and after which pages they are to be inserted.

We have a 4110 with DocuSP RIP but for most of the functions we need we can simply use the print driver, as we do on our 4127 with no external RIP.