The device, which was bought from London-based reseller Perfect Colours and installed in the past few months, replaced two ageing machines - an Océ 9600 and an HP Designjet 1050C - which were part-exchanged.
The Basildon, Essex-based company also operates a standalone inkjet A0 plotter. Nine of the firm’s CAD staff will use the new PageWide machine.
The XL 5000, which was launched last year, handles technical document production at speeds of up to 14 D/A1-size ppm. PageWide technology consists of more than 200,000 nozzles on a stationary print bar spanning the width of the page.
“The main reason for the purchase was due to the age of our previous machine and the cost of a major part required,” said PIP Electrics CAD operator Ricky Seymour.
Before installing the XL 5000 the firm was using two separate workflows, with the toner-based Océ printer producing monochrome black and white pages and the Designjet 1050C printing colour pages.
The business said this required a considerable amount of manual intervention from its team of CAD designers. Firstly, colour pages had to be identified and separated from black and white pages. The colour pages then had to be manually folded and inserted in the correct order into the monochrome document set after the printing process.
With the XL 5000, the same task is now completed in one single workflow at a fraction of the time.
The firm considered a range of alternative devices before coming to its final decision, including the KIP 3000 and the Océ ColorWave.
“We looked at the main features which included faster printing, colour printing and colour scanning,” said Seymour.
“The machine we had previously could only print and scan black and white and our project managers would not use the scanner as any highlighted areas would not show. Now they use it constantly. They also now have access directly at the machine to input and output to a USB scanning and prints.
“This machine also gives us more information with regards to ink use/remaining and paper length remaining on the display and also with visual indication on the machine, which makes it easier to know when they require replacing.”
PIP Electrics undertakes all aspects of mechanical and electrical engineering, either as a single-discipline principal contractor, or as a combined mechanical and electrical contractor, from initial design through to completion.
The firm has more than 150 staff and a turnover of around £26.5m.
