“After revolutionising the market 6 years ago, the launch of the Aficio™MP 1350 is Ricoh’s next step to a new benchmark for the industry,” says Gerard de Pender, Senior Product Manager at Ricoh‘s Europe’s Professional Products Group. “Handling peak volumes of nearly two million prints/copies per month, this system provides an extremely reliable and competitive solution for production customers,” he continues. "With a wide range of matching hardware and software options, including MicroPress®, we are able to cover our customers’ whole production workflow from job submission via creation, finishing and storage to invoicing. By extending our portfolio with the Aficio™ MP 1350, we aim to be leaders in this segment of market as well."
Unique in this segment, the Aficio™MP 1350 offers colour network scanning. Next to the obvious advantages, this novelty also ensures an even richer quality of black and white copies, due to the increased range of grey scales.
Job submission and management are facilitated by a choice of three controllers and matching software. The Fiery® EB135 for instance provides simplified job composition, job queue monitoring and automated workflow. doc-Q-manager is a software solution to cover all steps in the workflow, such as job ticketing, editing and job splitting. MicroPress® provides both a complete production workflow software package and a powerful controller. It offers advanced scanning, job composition and queue management. Ripping time is minimised as data for print on demand applications is saved in a post rip format. Cost management and allocation capabilities are also included.
The Aficio™MP 1350’s extensive finishing options greatly reduce time spent on finishing - typically 40% of the working day for a reprography operator. The optional online Plockmatic booklet maker creates 120-page books with the look and feel of a perfectly bound book for a fraction of the cost. Operators will also benefit from automatic punching, from the new GBC StreamPunch™ III, for all common wire-binding styles. System maintenance is minimal and trained operators are able to do a complete maintenance on the Aficio™MP 1350 in just 10 minutes. Paper and toner can be added while the systems are in use.
Other features include a maximum paper capacity of 8,500 sheets from a possible nine paper sources. All sources can feed A3 oversized paper and all support paper weights of up to 216 g/m². The system provides true 1,200 x 1,200 dpi output. Printing and copying is done with unique 0.5 mm registration accuracy, for both simplex and duplex, thanks to intelligent contact image sensors.
The Aficio™MP 1350 is the latest addition to Ricoh's advanced range of digital equipment. Ricoh currently manufactures one of the world’s most extensive line ups of multifunctional devices, copiers, printers, scanners and faxes, as well as advanced software solutions.
*Source: InfoSource, Spring Report 2006.