A technician works on an Image Access WideTEK scanner at the company's factory in Wuppertal, Germany.
By Ed Avis
I visited Germany last month to take part in the annual meeting of motio, the German reprographics organization. But before I attended their meeting, I visited two of APDSP’s sponsors, Es-Te Folding Systems in Berlin and Image Access in Wuppertal. Both companies are innovators in their respective areas, and their products impact the U.S. market.
In this article I describe my visits to these companies. In the next edition of APDSP Today, I’ll write about my visit to the motio meeting.
Tobias Pernkopf
Es-Te Folding Systems
Es-Te Folding Systems is a company with a uniquely European product – plan folding machines – that it hopes to grow in the United States.
“Folding plans is much more prevalent in Europe than in North America, but we do have customers there,” said Tobias Pernkopf, Es-Te’s sales director, who gave me a tour of the company’s ultra-modern factory in the Berlin area called Spandau.
Es-Te folding machines being assembled.
Es-Te’s current customers in North America range from auto factories, such as the Honda plant in Raymond, Ohio and the Takata factory in Auburn Hills, Michigan, to traditional reprographics firms, such as Reprodux in Ontario and MX Graphics in City of Industry, California. The U.S. distributor for Es-Te is Kevin Brinks in Denver: Kevin@largedocuments.com (www.largeformatscanners.com).
Pernkopf explained that folding plans rather than rolling them is the preferred method in many businesses because folded plans can be more easily bound in
A technician crafts a part for a folding machine.
binders or stored in flat drawers. In addition, a plan can be folded in a way to puts the title block on top, making it easy to identify at a glance. Folded plans are standard in Europe and Asia, so
companies in the United States doing business in those regions often fold plans.
Like other German factories I have visited, the Es-Te plant is clean, well-lit, and quiet.
Workers move efficiently among the assembly areas, from internal wiring to metal handling to testing to packing. The machines are designed and assembled entirely in the plant, made with components that are made right there or by other German factories. That helps the company maintain tight control on quality of parts and the final machines.
Speaking of quality, quality control is naturally an important part of the process at Es-Te. Pernkopf showed me around a room in the factory entirely devoted to testing each folder before it is packaged for shipping.
Es-Te makes stand-alone folders that are fed by hand, and in-line folders that are
connected to plan printers. Some are OEM components on printers sold by major manufacturers, and others carry the Es-Te brand.
The company also makes stackers. The Estestack 1000, which works especially well with Océ CW 900/910, creates neat piles of prints at 18 meters per minute. Click here to see a video of the Estestack 1000 at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzrUslB9R2k
Image Access
Image Access is well known to many U.S. reprographics shops because its innovative scanners have captured a growing share of the market. And the company’s equipment crosses fields – it has products specifically designed for book scanning, large-format document
Thomas Ingendoh in the showroom at Image Access' plant.
scanning, and art scanning.
I visited their headquarters and factory in Wuppertal, a small city near Dusseldorf. The company, founded by Thomas Ingendoh in 1994, has outgrown its space several times, and currently occupies most of a small industrial park. Because of its growth, the offices, factory, and shipping warehouse are spread among different buildings in the complex.
The Image Access factory is clean and quiet. When I was there, I observed workers assembling elements of the WideTEK line of wide-format document scanners, calibrating the imaging components, and preparing scanners for shipment. The employees are true technicians, and their efforts are careful and deliberate. As you can see in the photos, many of the spaces are lined with windows, a human-comfort feature found in many European
A WideTEK 36ART scanner being put together.
workspaces.
Image Access emphasizes its German roots, and the fact that the majority of the components of the scanners are German made. Ingendoh, an engineer, developed most of the innovations in the scanners himself and continues to oversee the engineering. His American-born wife Debra runs the marketing for Image Access.
One of the most interesting elements of the Image Access factory is a special controlled shipping department that prepares overseas deliveries. The space has been certified by authorities as a secure space, and only certain people are allowed inside unaccompanied. Other than the people who work in that area, nobody knows which scanners are destined for which addresses – the shipping instructions are affixed inside the secure area. This arrangement allows Image Access to create shipments that can go directly onto airplanes without having to go through other security checks, saving time and money.
Image Access is best known at the moment for the WideTEK document scanner line
BookEye scanners almost ready for customers.
and its BookEye book scanners. However, Ingendoh noted that the company sees great potential in the new art scanner – the WideTEK 36Art Scanner -- which is capable of 600 dpi scans of 36 x 60 inch items without touching the surface of the artwork. Unlike other art scanners, the scan head itself is stationery – the artwork lies on table that glides underneath.
"Because the table moves rather than the scanner, the scanner is much more stable," Ingendoh explains.
Another feature of the 36Art is that it uses three 600 dpi cameras side-by-side and illuminating lamps that create better light than natural lighting. A laser-projected stitching marker ensures that the three-camera arrangement creates perfectly seamless images. Click here to watch a video about the 36Art.
When I saw Ingendoh several weeks later at the SGIA show in New Orleans, he mentioned that the 36Art was attracting a lot of attention and he had already secured several orders at the show.
Visiting Germany for the motio show is something I look forward to every year, and visting Es-Te and Image Access this year added to the fun.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of my trip report in the next edition of APDSP Today. I’ll report on what I learned at the IGEPA trade show, which is where motio held its meeting this year.
Ed Avis is the managing director of APDSP. Reach him at ed.avis@apdsp.org.