Tree Towns, a specialist provider of technical document reproductions for architecture, engineering and construction firms, has expanded its services by adopting new technology from HP.
Having continually adapted to market changes over its 60 years of business by adopting new technology and expanding its services, Tree Towns recently added wide format colour printing services with a new HP PageWide XL 8000 printer to meet the growing demand for colour prints.
According to Tree Towns president and owner Chuck Wingard, many of their customers now print documents themselves and don’t require as much printing as they used to, prompting the company to expand into colour and display work for advertising and communications firms by offering wide format colour graphic services. The business also changed its name from Tree Towns Reprographics to Tree Towns Imaging & Colour Graphics.
With the declining demand for reprographic services and increasing demand for colour technical documents, finding the right colour printer for their shop was a priority.
Chuck Wingard observes that the company has remained competitive by providing a valuable service, and by investing in innovative equipment to separate them from the competition, helping them keep up with the turnaround times demanded by customers.
Even as it builds its colour display work, Tree Towns is actively working to drive demand for colour document reproduction, which they believe can help with communication around architectural plans and other technical documentation.
By mid-2014, Tree Towns had a broad array of production equipment, including several HP Designjet and HP Latex printers. With technical document printing still a mainstay of its business, Tree Towns was ready to boost both its black and white and colour capabilities. They chose the HP PageWide XL 8000 printer, an all-in-one printer for colour and black and white printing, well-suited to wide format colour jobs and fast printing of technical documents.
The HP PageWide XL 8000 met Tree Towns’ requirement for a printer that delivered high print quality at production speeds. Wingard explained that architects sometimes used very light lines and shading, and it was important to print them clearly, which their newest printer can do in both colour and black and white, fast.
One of the first printing firms to test the new HP PageWide XL 8000 printer, Tree Towns is exploring the printer’s expanded functionality and capabilities for a range of colour and black and white technical documents and colour display graphics.
Getting started was a smooth experience for the business, with Wingard describing the process to integrate the printer into Tree Towns’ operations as “practically seamless”. He expects the new printer to fill a gap in Tree Towns’ capabilities, explaining that they would like to offer higher volumes of print in addition to technical document reprographics.
Wingard says customers are impressed with the quality of print, whether in colour or black and white, with some specifying that they wanted their documents printed only on the HP PageWide XL printer.
To date, most of Tree Towns’ work on the HP PageWide XL 8000 printer has been line work on 20lb bond paper, in both colour and black and white, with sharp lines, fine details, and smooth grayscale. He is happy with the printer’s ability to print technical documents at a high speed of up to 30 D/A1 pages per minute. He notes that having a single printer for colour and black and white work, suitable for varied technical documentation and some wide format display jobs can reduce the need to keep different media for different printers. It also can reduce demand on floor space, and possibly operator manpower.
Initial results from printing posters on different media have been promising. For one job, Tree Towns printed 250 colour posters with gloss lamination, with the HP PageWide XL producing at 18 prints per minute.
For Wingard, the bottom line is that the HP PageWide XL printer is able to print black and white and colour technical documents at high speed with the assurance of excellent quality of print.
Watch the HP PageWide XL printer in action.
