New MicroPlex F40 Continuous Form Laser Printer with Flash Fusion

With a list price of under $25,000, the MicroPlex F40 is a great entry point to flash fusing printing. It can handle continuous labels and forms and media such as PE and PVC. It performs address printing and Cheshire Labels with USPS IMb with an affordable laser.

Impact Line Printers are often rated with their high-speed draft mode. The 1500 LPM Printronix P5215, P7215, and P8215 and the IBM 6400-015 and 6500-V15 line printers are actually 1125 LPM in DP data processing mode. It falls down to 600 LPM in Near Letter Quality if printing ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. It is even slower at 459 LPM if printing mixed cases with lower case characters. The MicroPlex F40 is four times that speed and with excellent 600 DPI clarity.

The low price of the MicroPlex SOLID F40 gives the customer a lot of site flexibility.  The F40 is a great backup machine for a higher-speed MicroPlex like the F90 or F166.  Current users appreciate that the MicroPlex Controller is the same across the product line. Some customers like to buy two of the same unit and split or alternate the workload. With the MicroPlex F40, the initial investment is much lower.

Check out chooseglmgroup.com/microplex-f40-laser-printer for specifications. Contact Warren Neeley at 817-430-6202 or wneeley@pciprinters.com for more information.

The End of the Printronix L5535 and Toner # 703532-002

The L5000 laser line from Printronix has come to its eventual end. Printer Connection offers a variety of choices for these customers.  

If June 2011 was in the "Printronix Bar and Grill", they had L5000 "Last Call for Alcohol". Printronix told their customers that the last order for L5000 Drums and Developer Units to their supplier was going to really be their last order. The supplier would not manufacture any more replacement units. When a laser printer needs a drum for quality reasons, it has to get a new drum.  If they're no longer available, you are done with that machine's usefulness.

In June 2013, Printronix ended their stocking orders for toner, and the inventory of Printronix L5535 and other L5000 toner supplies vanished.  L5000 Printer Users are faced with some decisions they they need to make quickly. Will they continue to print continuous laser forms and labels with a printer machine from another vendor, or move that output to some other type of device, other media,  and other style of printer?

Options are available right now.

PCI's customer options for Continuous Forms laser printers can be reviewed at http://goo.gl/tzNccL.  A move to cut sheet printing can be handled with moving to Canon, Xerox, or Ricoh units. Thermal printer options are with Printronix up to 8 inches in width and with Sato for even wider output.

For more information, contact Warren Neeley at 817-939-5614 or WNeeley@PCIprinters.com

Happy Trails to IBM and InfoPrint Printers

For many people in the business workplace, December 30, 2011 is the end to a long era. It might have have actually been in the summer 2010. That's when the Japanese copier company Ricoh stopped putting "Ricoh | IBM InfoPrint Solutions" on printer products.

When Ricoh bought IBM Printing Systems, it was reported that IBM required Ricoh to use the IBM Global Services consulting group to manage the IT transition. Big Mistake. IBM and Ricoh chose Oracle as the platform, organized many too many committee meetings (if one committee is good then eight committees are better), spent three years and executed no parallel testing. Cut-over in September 2011 was Cold Turkey .... and it killed the bird. Major Big Mistake. InfoPrint instantly became blind. They could not see if customers were entitled to maintenance, see if they had repair parts inventory, see how to invoice the sales, and other minor little things like that about running a business.

Ricoh the copier company had also bought out Ikon the copier sales company. The two copier companies became occupied with letting Ikon take over the operation of Ricoh Americas.

In April 2011, Ricoh announced the transition of and end to the InfoPrint organization. The big roll-fed machines were headed to Ricoh HQ in New Jersey to be run in the same building with IkonRicoh, and any other product line, personnel and business partners were to no longer exist in 2012.

So now what?

Understand that InfoPrint did not build any printers.

Printronix made the line printers, and InfoPrint had a different control panel and different IBM IPDS. That now goes away. Test your IPDS print on any new Printronix machines. Most of it will work the same, but it is not true, full, true-blue-IBM IPDS. If you absolutely must have it, work with us on a refurbished IBM unit.

Printronix supplied the thermal printers, with no change but the label.

Tally has been an alternative in serial printers and provides the 4347-i models 8 and 10 for the IBM printer marketplace.

Compuprint built the 4247 serial transaction printer, and it will be now be sold as the Compuprint 4247 with the same IPDS as before.

Lexmark provided the workgroup lasers, and the ONLY change was the label on the front panel. IPDS was the same.

Toray built the InfoPrint 62 and IBM did have a unique IPDS controller. MicroPlex has a wonderfully compatible IP62/IPDS module that drives all of their continuous forms laser printers, from Toray and others. The InfoPrint 75 (now will it become Ricoh 75??) CF laser could potentially be available from us in a cooperative marketing agreement with RPPS - stay tuned.

For more information or help in making the transition to non-InfoPrint products, contact Warren Neeley at wneeley@pciprinters.com or 817-939-5614. Read more at Warren's website.