A Photocopier Supplier’s Guide to Buying a New Printer 

Long gone are the days of hard to read and navigate LCD displays. All new photocopiers have large colour touchscreens. These wide Super VGA Smart Operation Panels offer multiple intuitive user interfaces that you can easily customise and automate workflows. Create iconic shortcuts, add convenient widgets, and access information with one-touch control using the same motions you use on your smartphone or tablet. This panel enhances user experience, making everyday tasks quicker and easier. 

The touchscreen also provides access to online services such as OneDrive, SharePoint, and Google Drive, as well as print management tools like PaperCut. 

All photocopiers now generally include a Reverse Automatic Document Feeder (RADF). An RADF allows for multiple pages to be stacked on the feeder and each page is automatically copied/scanned individually without the need to put documents on the scanning glass. For offices that do lots of scanning, especially duplex scanning, a Dual Scan Document Feeder allows high-speed copying and scanning of both colour and black-and-white documents in a single pass.  

 Using this printer, you can scan documents as large as A3 and as small as A6, double-sided (duplex).  

Toshiba call it a Dual Scan Document Feeder, whereas Ricoh call it a Single Pass Document Feeder, but whatever you want to call it, this saves significant time for offices that handle large volumes of scanning and copying. The DSDF can process 240 images per minute and holds up to 300 original documents, ensuring fast and efficient scanning. 

Monitor the activity for each of your users with personal passcodes or billing codes. Embedded Near Field Communication (NFC) technology and an optional NFC Card Reader enable users to gain access to their printing via proximity card. This enhances security and ensures that only authorised personnel use the device. 

Card Readers on Multifunctional Devices 

Copy and print management solutions depend on knowing the identity of the user standing in front of the printer or photocopier. This is important to ensure both secure print release and job cost allocation, helping to save toner, paper, and time with Find-Me print queues. 

 Print Security and Job Tracking 

With print management software installed on your photocopier, the first thing a user does when they walk up to an MFD is securely identify themselves. They can do this with a username and password, an access code, or by swiping a card. 

 If your organization uses swipe cards for door access, then adding a card reader to your printer provides the fastest and easiest option for your users to identify themselves. Using a card reader means there is no (or very little) typing needed, which saves time and prevents keyboard errors. In fact, some customers find the ease of using cards so compelling that they install card readers and issue cards just for use with their photocopiers. 

 If you do use swipe cards, it’s often a good idea to also enforce users to enter a PIN. That protects against someone picking up a lost card and accessing someone else’s print job or charging copy jobs to the wrong account. 

Most A3 Photocopiers include two 550-Sheet paper trays as standard, one of which can accommodate paper sizes up to SRA3.  

 Additional paper trays can be added to our A3 printers and multifunctional devices. These additional trays are added for convenience, whether you are printing on multiple media types (like letterhead or coloured paper) or optimising high-volume printing. 

 Our detailed printer brochures (these can be found in the download sections of our product pages) will show the standard number of sheets your printer can hold. It will also show the maximum number of sheets it could hold if you selected all the available paper inputs. 

 Selecting the paper tray when printing is easy. Just select the option from your computer, and your printer will select that tray when printing your document. You can even combine paper from individual trays as part of a larger document to create a booklet with different coloured cover pages or print the first page onto letterhead and subsequent pages on plain paper. 

 Many offices stick to two trays with A4 paper in one and A3 paper in the other. However, if you find that your printing is often interrupted to replace paper or you have to get up each time to add your letterhead, an additional paper tray can be a significant time saver. 

 For high-volume print environments, having multiple paper trays allows for greater flexibility and efficiency. You can load different paper types and sizes, reducing the need to manually switch paper for different tasks. This setup is ideal for offices that frequently print reports, presentations, and other professional documents requiring various paper types. 

 If you have any questions about what paper tray options are available, please ask. We include all this information within our quotations for new office printers, but our friendly team can also provide quotes to have additional trays added to an existing device. 

A photocopier’s bypass tray accommodates a wider range of paper stocks, from envelopes to 320 x 1,260 mm banner sizes. This functionality allows you to print onto media that cannot fit into the standard paper trays, or is too rigid (card stock) to be processed through a standard tray.  

 Using the bypass will allow you to create your own impressive prints from within your office. The option to print banners is very clever, and just requires you to purchase this banner paper from your stationery supplier.  

 If you would like to see samples of the print quality and versatility of our devices then please get in touch – we can post samples out to you, or you can arrange a demonstration.  

This is a little known feature, but using your photocopier you can create up to 200 shared or passcode-protected personal folders to store all your frequently used digital documents on the printer’s hard drive. This feature allows quick access to important documents, streamlining workflow and improving productivity. 

Security is a growing concern for companies of all sizes. The manufacturers of new photocopiers have introduced innovative methods of protecting your data that is processed and stored in your printing and scanning. 

Toshiba’s e-bridge range offers real time encryption of any data written onto their printer’s hard drive. An optional Data Overwrite Kit ensures that all data is erased after every print, scan, copy and fax job to to prevent the latent storage of valuable data on the system. 

The standard photocopier paper trays hold around 500 sheets of paper, but if your new printer is going to be used in a high-volume print environment then a High Capacity Paper Tray could be invaluable. Not having to re-fill the paper drawers minimises interruptions and improves the efficiency of your printing. When selecting a new photocopier, you can choose a Large Capacity Feeder that holds 2000 sheets of A4 paper in place of a standard cabinet. 

Unlike a Large Capacity Feeder, having a larger paper drawer doesn’t increase the footprint of the machine, so ideal if you have limited space available. 

Minimise interruptions to your printing by adding an optional Large Capacity Feeder. An LCF also known as a High Capacity Feeder (HCF) is an option for many of our high volume photocopiers. This optional external unit connects to your printer and allows you to load 2,500 – 4,400 A4 sheets for uninterrupted printing.  

If space is an issue and you don’t have room for a Large Capacity Feeder, take a look at a High Capacity Paper Tray.

A Bin Tray also known as an Extra Internal Output Tray is an optional feature for some of our photocopiers that utilise an external finisher. The job of a bin tray is to separate out your prints for faster and easier document retrieval. This feature is mostly used by busy offices where multiple users print multiple jobs simultaneously, preventing mix-ups and ensuring organized document handling. 

A Saddle Stitch Finisher is a specialized piece of equipment that attaches to your office printer, enabling it to create professional-quality booklets by stitching or stapling pages together along the spine, similar to a magazine. Ideal for producing A4 and A5 booklets up to 34 pages, this feature is particularly popular with schools, churches, and businesses that require in-house booklet production. By automating the process of creating polished, stapled documents, a Saddle Stitch Finisher saves time and labour while ensuring a high-quality, professional appearance for brochures, reports, and marketing materials. Additionally, it offers versatile finishing options such as collating, hole punching, and folding, making it a valuable tool for various business needs. 

All our new photocopiers are capable of connecting to your network via wired or optional wireless connectivity. Dual Network Support allows your printer to connect to multiple networks simultaneously via the additional network interface port. This feature enhances flexibility and ensures seamless integration into diverse IT environments. 

 Cloud and mobile printing – AirPrint and Mopria Print Services support the printing needs of mobile device users, while Wi-Fi Direct and the support for two separate networks, simplifies access to the MFPs.  

 Once connected to your network, toners can be ordered and dispatched automatically as required, and meter readings are collected remotely, ensuring accurate billing. Remote monitoring also allows for firmware updates and remote diagnostics. 

Both Ricoh and Toshiba’s Print & Capture Mobile Apps enable additional printing features, and gives users the ability to scan documents back to their tablets or smartphones.

Use the built-in web browser on the photocopier’s user interface (touch screen) to access Cloud Services such as PaperCut, SharePoint, OneDrive, Dropbox and Google Drive. This connectivity to cloud services allows you to scan documents directly to these services or search for previously saved documents and print directly from the cloud. 

This function isn’t available on every printer we supply, but can be added as an option to our larger devices. To save energy all new printers enter sleep mode when not in use, and only become active once someone prints or you touch the screen.  

The optional Motion Sensor function senses approaching users and awakens from Sleep Mode so it is ready by the time the user arrives at the machine. This feature reduces wait times and improves energy efficiency by ensuring the device is only fully active when needed.