A tough workhorse

The Epson ColorWorks™ C830 is built to meet stringent label printing requirements at Whitford, a global maker of fluoropolymer coatings.

PRINTING colour labels may seem like a simple task to most organisations, but not to Whitford, makers of the world's largest, most complete line of fluoropolymer coatings used on most household wares and vehicles.

It was critical that its labels had to adhere to strict standards set by the Globally Harmonised System (GHS) of classifying and labelling chemicals. With its previous colour laser printer, the company faced frequent outages and breakdowns during the printing process. They were printing about 2,000 labels a week.

“Paper jams were a very frequent issue,” says Mr Don Leung, Whitford’s Asia Pacific IT manager. “The high heat of the printer after prolonged usage also caused the label glue to melt and stick to the rollers.”

As a result, he had to replace the printer’s fuser, belt and other mechanical parts, due to the glue residue inside the printer. Whitford’s operations were so affected that it had to purchase a few more units for redundancy purposes.

“Our previous printer could not meet our printing needs,” Leung says. “We concluded that it was unfit for printing labels.”

The solution to his woes came in 2013, when he chanced upon the Epson ColorWorks™ C830, a business inkjet printer built to meet the toughest label printing requirements.

At Whitford, label printers must be tough workhorses that can handle large print volumes in excess of 2,200 labels a week. “Our printers need to withstand running for long durations. They should be able to feed the labels smoothly without much manual intervention, while printing quickly to meet the job demands. We are also looking for a printer that uses ink efficiently,” said Leung.

According to Leung, the C830 fulfills those requirements. Thanks to the printer’s speedy performance of 19.7ppm, Whitford now takes just 14 seconds, compared with 24 seconds previously, to print each label using a GHS application hosted in its UK data centre.

“Despite the high latency Internet connection between the UK and Singapore, we are happy with the printer performance and speed,” Leung says.

Paper jams are also a thing of the past, as the C830 is designed to minimise such issues that plague other competing printers.

And even if a paper jam happens, the printer will automatically release the paper guide, allowing for the rapid removal of media.

The C830 also uses high-capacity ink cartridges to enable affordable, large-volume printing while dramatically lowering downtime spent on changing cartridges, creating more up-time and less periodic maintenance.

In fact, with the C830, Whitford has slashed its monthly spending on black and colour cartridges by 70 per cent.

“Our production staff are quite happy now,” Leung says. “They don’t need to deal with paper jams or work overtime just to finish printing all the labels. They can focus more on their main duties, and do not need to pay much attention to the printer.”

So satisfied were they with the C830 printer, the company bought two more units for their Singapore office, and another three units for its plant in China.