SHORTS, BRIEFS & SNAPSHOTS

Who's who and what's where in large format scanners - August / September 2008

Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 - where is it?

The long-awaited Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 remains under wraps in Colortrac's St Ives head office. First previewed on the Canon booth at drupa in Germany in May, we have been expecting an announcement about its release ever since then.

In recent weeks a number of people, including some at Contex, have been asking us where it is and why the delay?

The Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 uses a new "clamshell" design which offers benefits to the user at the expense of some technical difficulties for the manufacturer. However, as a leading wide format imaging innovator, Colortrac has never feared technical challenges. Our spies report that Colortrac are expressing delight with the Ci 40's sharpness and accuracy.

A number of Colortrac distributors have tested the SmartLF Ci 40 and are eager to sell it. Despite this pressure, Colortrac has resisted shipping the product before it is ready. The SmartLF Ci 40 is probably Colortrac's most important product launch since the SmartLF 4080 in 2004. It is made all the more important by the favourable acclaim which Contex's recently announced SD Series of CIS-based scanner has received. Colortrac, presumably, know they have to get this right.

We believe that the SmartLF's release is imminent. We have just received a press release describing Colortrac's CopySmart professional colour managed scan-to-copy software now being available with specialist printer drivers to support Canon's first 44" high-speed printers for the AEC, CAD and GIS market, the imagePROGRAF iPF810 and imagePROGRAF iPF820 series. The image attached to this press release shows the Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40 on a Colortrac Unversal Repro Stand working in conjunction with a Canon imagePROGRAF iPF820.

This, the first official image of the Colortrac SmartLF Ci 40, leads us to believe that this scanner will be released very soon, presumably early October. There is also another clue to its likely release date, this one supplied by a slightly peeved Contex.

Misleading claims on Colortrac's web site

Contex has drawn our attention to Colortrac's website which continues to maintain that it is "the only large format scanner manufacturer to offer customers a choice of CCD (charge couple device) and CIS (contact image sensor) based large format scanners".

Since Contex recently released the SD Series, their first CIS-based large format scanner, Colortrac's claim is no longer correct. Contex now supply both CCD (HD Series) and CIS (SD Series) large format scanners. Colortrac's claim would be true if it said it was "the first to offer a choice of either CIS or CCD devices". That is an historical fact!

We asked Colortrac why they were continuing to make this incorrect claim. Colortrac reminded us that they had already changed their ads on Scanners4CAD and Wide Format Imaging which had previously made the same claim and that they are in the process of changing and updating their website. We imagine that the SmartLF Ci 40 will be announced when Colortrac's new web site goes live. Watch that space!

Image Access black magic - WideTEK gets white backplate

Image Access has released a press release claiming that "large format transparent documents (i.e. engineering drawings) are usually scanned using a backlight unit". Its press release states that it now offers "a cost-efficient and easy to install alternative" - a white backplate for its WideTEK large format scanners.

There is also an interview on Image Access' website entitled "WideTEK 48 vs. Magnum G600 - Customer Tells It Like It Is". The interview is between Image Access and Werner Claussnitzer, the president of XDOC, a German business information technology and document management company which has both a WideTEK 48 and a Contex Magnum G600 wide format scanner with an attached backlight.

This interview provides the first description of the use of the WideTEK's newly acquired white backplate, an optional device which operators can retrofit to their WideTEK scanners in order to get clear, high-contrast reproductions from old, dirty transparent large format documents. By fitting this white backplate operators can achieve better contrast in the scanned image than they would get from the supplied black backplate.

The WideTEK range's standard black backplate is "ideal for non-transparent and particularly double-sided printed documents (i.e. newspapers), because the background does not show through". The optional white backplate can be purchased from Image Access' 24-hour Customer Service Portal on their homepage. Replacement is quick and easy and requires no additional tools.

The price of the white backplate is as follows:

• WideTEK 36 - 154 Euros
• WideTEK 42 - 200 Euros
• WideTEK 48 - 200 Euros

Image Access say the white backplate option utilises an "ingenious binarization algorithm" which enables operators to "get optimal brightness allocation of the image. Most documents, even with quality inconsistency, are automatically binarized using a single setting". Image Access claim that the WideTEK's combination of optimized LED illumination, white backplate and the adaptive 2D binarization algorithm enables its operators to achieve better scan results than most conventional backlight units.

We wonder "why do scanners even need a backlight unit?"

Image Access say that with a backlight unit "a document is additionally illuminated from behind to capture the content of the document. One of the substantial disadvantages of the backlight unit is – aside from the high price – the complicated adjustment of the scanner brightness and the backlight brightness, because both affect each other. Image Access now offers a cost-efficient and easy to install alternative."

We question Image Access' claim that transparent documents "are usually scanned using a backlight unit". Most transparent drawings are scanned on standard scanners - we have scanned many such drawings ourselves without the need for a backlight. Indeed, backlights cannot be fitted to CIS scanners and it is unusual to see such devices attached to CCD scanners.

The backlight quoted in the interview is an LCS backlight module from Microbox, a third party supplier, fitted to a now redundant Contex Magnum G600. The LCS backlight adds an additional fluorescent light tube which needs to be fitted inside the scanner. Had this been a real problem, Contex would have provided a fix. Had there been a real market for backlight devices, Contex would no doubt have supplied their own solution. We know of no similar device for Colortrac scanners or indeed for any other scanner supplier.

What does seem certain though is that Image Access WideTEK large format scanners need a white backplate added to them when scanning some transparent drawings.

To read Image Access' full interview with with Werner Claussnitzer click here.

Colortrac go for growth based on quality controls.

The appointment of the electronics industry quality control veteran, Matthew Harris, to the position of Colortrac's first Director of Operations is a welcome development. It promises CAD users ever better built large format scanners at lower prices.

Colortrac's recent press communications have all been about new senior staff appointments, quality controls, expansion and corporate codes of conduct. It appears Colortrac is intent on growth through the application of ISO quality processes, the improvement of product support activities and the introduction of aggressively priced new wide format scanners.

Colortac was founded in 1989 to develop large format scanning solutions for the oil exploration industry. Since then Colortrac has been a pioneer and innovator in cost-effective colour and monochrome wide format scanners. It claims to be "the first manufacturer to deliver affordable digital color image capture for large format copying and wide format scanning applications in the graphic arts, construction, engineering, GIS, mapping and many other large format scanner applications."

Colortrac acquired US-based ANAtech and Tangent Imaging Systems in 1999. That acquisition gave Colortrac a detailed knowledgebase of first-class, patented, wide format scanning technology developed since the early 1980's. The acquisitions significantly strengthened Colortrac's capabilities in 2D adaptive thresholding for monochrome images, (its ScanWorks product's thresholding is the best we've seen), and in closed-loop colour calibration technology for large format scan-to-copy and scan-to-print applications.

For some years Colortrac was the only large format scanner manufacturer to recognise the merits of both CCD and CIS optical imaging technology. The SmartLF Gx is Colortrac’s fifth generation of CCD large format scanner and its most innovative to date. Colortrac claim with some justification that "the SmartLF Cx is the market leading standalone CIS wide format technical document scanner worldwide". These products are supported by free SmartLF All-in-One and optional ScanWorks and CopySmart professional software.

Since 2004, Colortrac's fortunes have improved considerably, largely due to the undoubted success of its CIS-based SmartLF's. During these years of growth and innovation the main criticism levelled against Colortrac was that its engineering quality was not up to the standards of other manufacturers. As a result, Colortrac has made a determined effort to improve the quality of its products. During the last two years Colortrac has announced Kevin Zheng as QA Manager in China; Simon Wincott as World Technical Support Manager and now Matthew Harris as their first Director of Operations. In short, Colortrac seem determined to build a better product.

Add to this Colortrac's promise to provide the most aggressively priced wide format scanner and it looks like more good news. Well, we hope so!

Matthew Harris has a formidable list of achievements to his name. While still a student, he joined CASE (Computer and Systems Engineering) in 1974 as a designer of multiplexors, modems and telex diverter stations. He set up CASE's BABT (British Approvals Board for Telecommunications) Test Laboratory, worked closely with Underwriters Laboratory and chaired the TTPC (Telecoms Terminal Equipment Policy) committee of the FEI (Federation of the Electronics Industry), As a committee chairman of the FEI, he represented the interests of British industry to the DTI (Department of Trade and Industries) and EU (European Union) commission.

As Company Quality Manager, Harris was responsible for the quality output of CASE's 300 service and 150 manufacturing operators. During this time, he sat on the Policy Advisory Committee of UKAS (United Kingdom Accreditation Service), the sole national body recognized by government to assess organizations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services. In 1998, he joined Cambridge-based Simoco International where he was in charge of a £2.5m pa international telecommunications support organization. In 2001 he left Simoco to start his own business offering specialist consultancy services to British businesses. It was as an ISO 9001 consultant that he met Colortrac for the first time in 2008.

"As Colortrac's Director of Operations, my job will be to consistently deliver quality products and services to customers" said Harris. "I enjoy a challenge, particularly in addressing issues that come from high growth and which relate to sustaining growth. In that regard, I am looking forward to managing Colortrac's large format scanner production and in future getting £1m worth of quality assured wide format products out of the factory door on time each month, with the necessary support and services infrastructure in place to support them."

Like other staff at Colortrac, Harris is now attempting to learn Mandarin Chinese. As part of his new job, his first act was to revisit the Suzhou manufacturing plant where he previously helped implement an internal quality audit. Harris says he is "reasonably impressed with the set-up in Suzhou. The workers are conscientious and hard-working with well established continuous improvement programmes in place. However, as there is always room for further improvements, I am looking forward to working with Colortrac operations staff world-wide to achieve greater efficiency in production and world-class quality processes."

Cadalyst September 2008 Scanner and Printer Feature.

Cadalyst magazine, the world's leading and probably biggest CAD magazine, (unless, quite possibly, there are now publications with bigger circulations in China or India), has a September 2008 cover feature article entitled "Big Tools for Big Jobs - Wide-Format Scanners and Printers Make Small Work of Large Projects".

Written by Ron LaFon, a contributing editor specialising in computer graphics and electronic publishing, the article appears under "Cadalyst Labs Software & Hardware Reviews". Lest you think this must be a hands-on evaluation of different large format scanners and printers, it is not. Ron and Cadalyst state very clearly that this is a "survey of products.... not a hands-on review".

The wide format scanning products surveyed are restricted to the Colortrac SmartLF Cx 40 series, the Contex HD HD3650 (Base and Plus), HD4230i (Base and Plus), SD4410 and the Océ TCS4XT Scanner. The featured wide format printers are the Canon ImagePROGRAF iPF720, iPF8000S and iPF9000S; the HP Designjet T610, T1100 and T1100MFP (multifunction printer) series; the Océ CS2224 and CS2236 and the new Océ ColorWave 600 which uses Océ CrystalPoint technology.

On the scanner side, the article is a listing of manufacturer supplied facts and figures, one of which is scan speed.

Different large format scanner manufacturers rate scan speed differently. It serves no purpose quoting one makers' listed speed against another's when they are rated by different criteria. Cadalyst's article describes Colortrac's criteria for speed in inches per second "at 600 dpi (based on 36" x 48" E-size media)", omits any paper size comparison for Contex while referring to Turbo/400 mode*, whatever that is, and refers to Océ's output in feet per minute at 600 dpi. This is not helpful.

If comparing scan speeds is to serve a purpose, it must be evenly measured. On the plus side, Cadalyst correctly advise that fast scanning speeds are meaningless if the scanning software is slow and unproductive to use.

The market for CAD scanners has changed a lot in recent years and will continue to do so. Unfortunately, Cadalyst offers no indication of where the market is going. (This was probably not within the remit of this article, however some comment would have been helpful to buyers). We believe that in future technical document scanning will be dominated by CIS-based wide format scanners. Traditional CCD-based wide format scanners, such as Cadalyst's reviewed Contex HD3650, HD4230i and the Océ TCS4XT, while no longer the most suitable for CAD work, remain good for printing colour graphics arwork and, presumably, fit well with the reviewed large format printers.

The reviewed CIS devices were the Colortrac Cx 40, (definitely not CCD scanners), along with Contex's new entry-level SD4410 monochrome-only scanner. The Contex SD Series is designed to meet all the technical document scanning needs of AEC and CAD professionals. Contex expect the big sellers to be its colour SD series scanners, not the reviwed entry-level monochrome-only SD4410. When it comes to buying a scanner, what most CAD users want is a scanner with some colour capability! Unfortunately, Cadalyst have reviewed the SD scanner with the least appeal to most CAD users.

As a wide format scanner and printer survey, Cadalyst's article is incomplete. In fairness, it was probably never meant to be an all-embracing round-up. However, some very important large format scanning products are missing, for example, the Graphtec CSX300, IS210 and CS510/610 and the Contex SD colour models, not to mention the forthcoming Colortrac Ci 40, previewed at drupa 2008 and due out later this month (September). Paradigm Imaging must be disappointed at not being included. Their combination of 42" wide Graphtec scanners and Canon printers enjoy success as scan-to-copy systems in the USA among the very CAD audience which this article is written for.

*In Turbo/400 mode a document is scanned at 200 dpi optical in the direction of paper feed and at 400 dpi optical across it. The result is a faster scan than at "true" 400x400 dpi, but with diminished image quality.

If you want to comment on this, please contact us and we WILL print your view here.

To email Scanners4CAD, please click here.

To read Cadalyst's "Big Tools for Big Jobs - Wide-Format Scanners and Printers Make Small Work of Large Projects", click here.

See Image Access at InterGEO.

INTERGEO, the world's leading specialist trade fair and congress for GIS, Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management, takes place at the Bremen Exhibition Centre, Bremen, Germany, from September 30 to October 2, 2008. Over 400 companies and institutions are expected to show their products and services.

Among these will be Image Access, the innovative German manufacturer of the WideTEK range of super fast, networked large format colour scanners.

You can see Image Access in Hall 4/4.618.

Image Access will demo the latest and widest addition to its WideTEK range - the WideTEK 48. Image Access say the WideTEK product range now covers document scanning "up to 36, 42 und (sic) 48 inches in width. Thanks to the high scanning speed, the devices show brilliant results in only a few seconds. The WideTEK scanners enable the operator to scan very long documents extremely fast in full color and at a high resolution".

Image Access claim that "All models are outfitted with the most modern camera technology utilizing CCD systems and scan in true optical resolution of 1200x600 dpi". While the new Contex SD Series now has true 1200x1200 dpi optical resolution, they are CIS-based large format scanners. In CCD-based wide format scanners 1200x600 dpi remains as high as it gets.

Image Access say that "The WideTEK family of scanners is unique for its extremely fast scanning speed". BERTL, the US test laboratory, recognised this when it awarded the WideTEK 36 its "Best Wide Format Innovative & Fastest Performance Color Scanner in 2008".

What makes the WideTEK range so attractive to Scanners4CAD is its innovative architecture and OS independent networking capability. WideTEK scanners are fitted with a touch screen, on which almost all functions and parameters of the software are available to the user. Image Access were the first proponents of "true" networked "walk-up scanning" where the operator literally walks up to the scanner and sends the scanned drawing to an FTP server, the windows network, a network printer, a USB stick or via eMail without using an external PC.

Scanning solutions from Image Access include Scan2Net which has a Batch Scan Wizard to automate the scanning of large quantities of source documents. The Scan2USB option allows the operator to save scanned images directly to a USB storage medium. It includes a PDF Generator which creates PDF/A files directly in the scanner for long-term archived storage. The Scan2Edit option allows the user to export the scanned images directly into an image enhancement or graphics software application. Scan2ICC is an online tool for creating an individual ICC profile for a scanner. With Scan2VGA, a VGA monitor can be directly connected to the scanner.

Free Tickets to INTERGEO for GIS professionals

GIS, Geodesy, Geoinformation and Land Management professionals wanting to see the WideTEK range need to travel to Bremen Exhibition Centre, Bremen, Germany, between September 30 to October 2, 2008.

To request your free ticket, please email Image Access with your full name and postal address details (so they can mail you a ticket!). Email info@imageaccess.de.

To see an INTERGEO floorplan with Image Access' location: click here.

For details on INTERGEO, see: www.intergeo.de.

For more information on the WideTEK see www.imageaccess.de.

Z SPOT Media achieves ISO 9001 certification.

Z SPOT MEDIA, the Bucharest-based Colortrac large format scanner distributor and reseller of Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software, has announced that it has achieved ISO 9001 certification.

ISO 9001:2000 gives the requirements for quality management systems. It is now firmly established as a global standard for improving and providing assurance about the ability of a supplier to satisfy a customer's quality requirements and to enhance their satisfaction in a supplier-customer relationship.

Cristian Dumitru, General Manager of Z Spot Media, has told us that "in order to maintain the high level of trust in our products and services and to express our capabilities and proficiency in the wide format market, Z Spot Media requested and achieved ISO 9001 certification".

"All our employees have been trained and have the necessary skills and abilities for respecting the principles and procedures of the system, for the delivery of products and services at the highest standard of quality." The ISO 9001 certificate was issued by ICS REGISTRARS, under UKAS (UK) accreditation.

Z Spot Media's large format portfolio includes Colortrac scanners, Canon and HP printers and plotters, Epson proofing printers and Nashuatec copiers. These are completed by Italian Rigoli trimmers and folding machines, Beauty roll laminators, Scan2CAD raster to vector conversion software and RIP software from SCP.

"This certification is a confirmation of our continuous efforts to become one of the leading distributors in the Romanian large format market. It shows our commitment to both to our customers and our suppliers to provide complete professional solutions for digitization, restoration, archiving, management and distribution of large or special format documents" Dumitru added.

Besides offering large format scan-copy-print systems, Z Spot Media also add the right tools to perfectly fit the customers' needs: folding machines and RIP engines for copy-centers, vectorization software for technical market, restoration software and PDF compression for library digitisation management, roll laminating up to 2m width for poster printing in the advertising industry, etc.

Dumitru said "The extra value for a turn-key solution is given by prompt services as the company specialists provide the initial consulting and demo tests, user training on delivery and installation, consumables and supplies, maintenance and full-contract services".

Z Spot Media is also active in the digital library sector. The company offers planetary flatbed scanners suitable for digitization and restoration of books and bonded and rigid documents that can not be scanned with usual roll-fed scanners. Z Spot Media is the Romanian distributor of Konica-Minolta A3 book-scanners and microfilm scanners for creating long lasting archives.

Historic books, legacy archives of newspapers, magazines, journals and catalogues up to A2 size can be scanned using CopiBook stand alone book-scanning stations manufactured by the French company, i2s. For larger A1 and A0 originals, the i2s DigiBook proves the best solution, offering excellent quality with preservation of fragile and precious originals, according to Z Spot Media.

Z Spot Media
http://www.zspotmedia.ro

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