Five star print test lab facility opens doors
Published January 18, 2008 at 10:39 pm · Filed under Printer / Copier
Five star facility
Printer testing organisation Buyers Laboratories International (BLI) has opened a UK facility. James Goulding was given a tour
Suggest to David Sweetnam, European Lab and Research Manager at BLI International (UK), that printers and MFPs are commodity items that all do the same thing to an acceptable standard and you get short shrift. He argues that not only do individual machines vary greatly, but that the same machine can differ from region to region due to regional firmware, local power sources and different consumables.
This is one reason why BLI, which has been testing print devices in the US for more than 20 years, has just opened its first European testing facility. Another is that buyers in Europe and America have different needs that may not be adequately represented by a US testing facility.
“The imaging market is now so solutions-oriented and machines are designed to fit customer requirements. If you can’t get a face-to-face understanding of what the customer in a particular region needs you can’t provide a complete service,” explained Sweetnam.
Sweetnam points to the environment as an example of the different priorities of purchasing managers on the two continents.
“The role that the environment plays in office purchasing is huge in Europe, whereas in the US it is just a small part of things,” he said. “The subject has moved so far up the R&D agenda that all manufacturers will have some environmental qualifications, such as Energy Star accreditation or Blue Angel. We can go deeper than this and supply a range of environmental tests that will show buyers who has the best machine from an environmental perspective.”
He points out that as energy consumption is a key aspect of any environmental assessment, it is important to measure peak and overall power consumption using a local power source, which, with the opening of a UK testing facility, BLI is now able to do.
Rigorous tests
Tucked away in a non-descript unit on a small industrial estate in Wokingham, the two-storey facility is designed to test everything from 4 pages per minute personal printers to enormous production printers, like the Oce VarioPrint 6250 (see pic), which can print on both sides of a page simultaneously at speeds of 250 impressions per minute.
At the time of writing, BLI had just installed one of Oce’s devices and, in the largest independent assessment of the machine ever undertaken, is using it to print 10 million impressions over a two-month period.
BLI’s testing procedure is rigorous and methodical, with printers being required to print 50% of their maximum duty cycle and MFPs 100%. The mix of tasks is devised to reflect typical office usage. An MFP, for example, will have a 50:50 split between copy and print jobs; an 80:20 split between virgin and recycled paper; and a 70:30 split between single and double-sided output.
Every step is taken to ensure a level playing field. BLI uses one mill-supplied virgin paper (UPM Yes 80gsm) and one 100% recycled grade (Steinbeiss Vision); it maintains consistent temperature and humidity levels; it uses industry-standard test sheets; and there is a dedicated power supply for every power socket in the room so that devices don’t have to compete for power.
To maintain objectivity, manufacturers are kept at arm’s length. “Because we act as if we are end users, manufacturers can’t come in every day. They are only allowed to make scheduled preventative maintenance visits or service calls,” Sweetnam explained.
BLI takes just as much care with its computing infrastructure, which includes wired and wireless networks, Dell workstations, Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Exchange and numerous software applications. So that computer or network performance does not affect test results, there is a separate file server for data transfer and after each test workstations are turned back to their Restore Point.
Output is assessed using sophisticated colour analysis and verification tools that can be used to measure how well a machine prints colour, whether colour quality is consistent throughout a print run and whether it can match Pantone colours; high precision scales are used to weigh toner cartridges before and after a test to see how many pages you get per gram of toner; and ozone meters and decibel readers measure environmental performance.
bliQ portal
BLI doesn’t charge for testing devices as Sweetnam claims that this would compromise its independence and objectivity (though it does sell report reproduction rights to manufacturers). Instead, it makes its money by selling subscriptions to the bliQ web portal where test reports are published. An annual subscription costs £850 for a single seat (volume discounts apply).
BLI claims to have more than 6,000 bliQ subscribers in Europe, including manufacturers, dealers and public sector and corporate buyers. The bliQ database gives access to all BLI test reports, including Lab Reports, BLI Lab Notes (1 page cheat sheets), Field Reports (independent tests carried out on the manufacturer’s premises) and First Look overviews of new products. Subscribers can compare up to 25 competitor machines side-by-side and will soon be able to use an online TCO tool to calculate the total cost of ownership of different devices.
This sort of information is enormously valuable to subscribers, as well as the wider purchasing community, as BLI European sales manager Dean Armstrong explains.
“bliQ increases the professionalism that dealers deliver to clients and is a fantastic tool for them so that their knowledge of products and the industry is increased. This is a real benefit to customers as sales people can position a product to match users’ requirements, making it less likely that they are sold a machine that doesn’t suit their purposes,” he said.
“Machines now do most things pretty well, but there are still differentiators. The biggest frustration is if the person selling machines doesn’t know how to assess what a customer needs. If they don’t know how to ask the right questions they won’t be able to deliver the right solution. bliQ gives buyers a much better chance of being recommended the right solution.”
With the opening of a test lab to address the needs of European buyers, this is true of UK buyers as well as our American cousins.
01189 772000 http://www.buyerslab.com/
