Océ VarioPrint 1105
Heavy Card Stock Support
In the front office, heavy card stock tends to
be used in limited quantities for adding
covers to external documents, and for print
on demand brochure printing on a customer
by customer basis. Many workgroup devices
satisfy the heavy card stocks paper
demands via a straight paper path bypass
feed tray.
In contrast, a back office device will be
expected to handle much longer print runs of
heavy card stock— e.g., for providing in-
house production of marketing materials like
brochures. Every paper supply for the Océ
VarioPrint 1105 can handle paper
stocks up to 140 lb. Index/244gsm, with paper
drawer four able to handle the even heavier
170 lb. Index/300gsm paper stock.
In contrast, most similarly-priced competitors
are limited to 110 lb. Index/200gsm stock,
and usually only from select drawers,
resulting in much higher user intervention
rates on long card stock print runs.
Coated Paper
As mentioned earlier in the report, coated
paper can play an important role in the
workflow of a back office print device.
Coated paper has an outer layer of coating
applied to one or both sides. They are
available in a variety of finishes, like gloss,
dull and matte.
Coated papers are used very extensively in
the offset print market due to their good ink
holdout and minimal dot gain capability,
which can be especially important for
recreating sharp, bright printed images,
black and white halftones, and four color
process images. The smooth surface of
coated papers also helps to reflect light
evenly. As print shop managers look to
move their less cost-efficient workflow away
from offset presses to digital laser print
presses they have to safeguard the
customer acceptance of the end product,
i.e., the printed output. One of the easiest
ways to do this is by printing onto coated
papers, maintaining the same high quality
and output style. The special coated surface
can create problems for some digital print
devices which rely solely on friction paper
feeding, rendering coated paper print runs
as either being unreliable or not supported at
all. The Océ VarioPrint 1105
does not have this problem due to an air-
assist technology built into the paper feed
mechanism for all drawers.
Air-Assist Paper Feeding Technology
The main issue surrounding the feeding of
coated paper stocks, or specialty media, like
thick papers, pre-printed stocks and other
glossy stock, is the ability to separate each
sheet before feeding it at high speed into the
engine. The Océ VarioPrint 1105
includes an air blower within each
paper drawer which aids in the separation of
each sheet before the friction rollers grip the
sheet and carry it into the engine unit. Each
paper drawer also includes a weight
designed to minimize non feeds of heavy
weight and pre-printed paper stocks plus a
passage detector which looks for paper
skew and other misfeed errors.
Paper Handling
