For many years people made a single copy of a document on a printer and then copied it centrally on the office copier. With the increased use of email and faster printers, a migration of work has occurred from copiers to mulitifunction printers.
Work
has migrated to multifunction printers in part because people
now choose to distribute their documents electronically by email,
instead of copying a document to be handed out. The person receiving
the electronic document then prints their copy out locally on
a printer. Another emerging trend has been to print several sets
of a document on a printer rather then making a master document
which is used for copying. As a result of this migration to printers,
printer companies have added extra features such as collation
and stapling to compete with copiers.
So, the multi function printer is the next step in this evolution, combining scanning, faxing, printing and copying into one device that is networked to the entire office.
Digital Copying with a multi function printer
Multifunction printers always use digital technology to make copies, meaning that the machine scans the original document into a digital format and then prints it out. Many multifunction printers have a capability known as scan once/print many: the document is saved in memory only once before being printed out multiple times. Multifunction printers using this technology can collate copies electronically prior to printing. As a result, sorter bins are no longer required and production time is shorter and easier to predict.
Why Scanning is Becoming So Important
Scanning has become an important part of the multifunction environment. Digital scanning combined with powerful scanning software can provide a convenient way to easily archive documents in network folders. Many organizations which have adopted this technology no longer require paper backups of documents and faxes, instead saving them automatically to a network.
On some monochrome multi function printers color scanners are
standard, which improves the image quality of photographs and
halftone images. Scanning also provides the ability to scan a
pdf file and email that file directly to someone, rather than
faxing a document.
