HKUST
2010-SEP-29 - Education
Canon’s Cutting-Edge Professional Digital Print System Helps HKUST’s Publishing Technology Center Uplift Service Standard

Being the leading university in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) possesses superior qualities for education, and has relentlessly strived to provide life-long training to a great number of students. Its tradition in pursuing excellence not only reflects within the academic domain, but also in the various facilities and service provided to students and teaching and administrative staff alike. HKUST runs a Publishing Technology Center where its Printing Team is dedicated to support the huge printing demands of the University. Kenny, reprographic officer of publishing technology center, said, “We are mainly responsible for the printing of teaching materials, academic journals and other information materials of the University, which include student handbook, prospectus, publications and event booklets etc. Using in-house printing service can effectively control cost and quality, as well as keeping information confidential.” Kenny continues, “There is high expectation on the quality of printed materials from the University. Take teaching materials as example, they contain not only texts but also detailed illustrations, thus we expect the printing performance to be of high clarity in order not to adversely affect teaching.” Canon, the reliable printing partner Kenny from publishing technology center shows us the printed materials using C7000VP and C1 Kenny explains, “The quality of printed materials largely lies in color proofing. Some colors which look nice on the computer monitor can appear different on prints.” To this end, the Printing Team has purchased Canon imagePRESS C1 (C1) Professional Color Printer two years ago for its design team. C1 is dedicated to satisfy the high image quality demand from the design industry. Its stable print performance and wide color gamut result in fabulous printed images in rich and natural color gradation. “Design team colleagues are very satisfied with its performance, as they can now output color proof with C1 for color proofing. C1 is a reliable machine that can accurately output prints similar to offset printing. Designers can be more assured of the output colors, making printed materials look perfect,” appraises Kenny. Canon iPC7000VP and iPF9000, the smart choice for printing As technology progresses, there is growing expectation for quality printing from the University. To meet this expectation, the printing team has decided to source for a suitable printing machine under its structured procurement process. After careful analysis and multi-testing, Kenny has selected C7000VP color digital printing system and iPF9000 12-color dual print head large format printer. C7000VP incorporates industry’s best of breed digital printing technology. It is equipped with a dual fixing system to ensure consistent productivity in high accuracy. With its new V Toner (Vivid color), the printer is capable of providing more faithful and vivid color reproductions that compliment offset production runs. Other leading features also include the support of versatile paper types, front and back page position matching, advanced air-feeding technologies that enable precise paper feeding to improve efficiency, and paper capacity of up to 10,000 sheets. “Using C7000VP not only eliminates the hassle of plate making process in offset printing, it also allows Print-On-Demand to be more broadly applied as it remains cost-effective even for low volume printing. For example, we will now use it to print color cover for quantity under 300 pieces, apart from using it for high volume printing and copying. Thanks to the printer’s speed and quality, both productivity and service quality of our center are enhanced,” said Kenny. The C1 at publishing technology center is the dedicated machine to produce color proof for designers iPF9000 12-color dual print head large format printer possesses advantages of high speed, high precision, fine image details and reduction on ink consumption. Incorporating an innovative L-COA image processor developed by Canon that drastically reduces image processing time, the printer brings more true-to-life image color and smooth and natural gradation. Its dual print head system can save half the printing time. According to colleagues from Publishing Technology Center, “iPF9000 can support versatile paper types such as plain paper, CAD, fine art paper, thick coated art paper, Japanese paper, canvas and transparency etc. We mainly use it for output of large format prints such as poster, banner, easy-roll banner and students’ works. In the past we had to rely on printing house to produce prints from computer files, but we found that the results vary much in quality. Very often, due to unsatisfied quality control in some printing houses, the output was much differed from our expectation which is disappointing. After the incorporation of iPF9000, both our staff and students enjoy the convenience and peace of mind for saving time to outsource the print works. Moreover, we have brought into practice a comprehensive quality control procedure for guaranteed output quality.” iPF9000 for printing of posters, banners and other large format output Different teaching materials can be printed on demand according to actual consumption Canon’s imagePRESS C7000VP color digital printing system