Canon imageFORCE · Media Handling
The Print Jobs You’re Sending Out That Your Copier Could Be Doing
Banners, water-resistant menus, coated direct mail, folded brochures — Canon’s A3 imageFORCE models handle media most offices still send to a print shop.
Most offices have a quiet list of jobs that automatically get emailed to a print shop. The banner for the trade show booth. The laminated menus. The postcard mailer on glossy stock. Nobody decided those had to go out — it’s just that the copier wouldn’t run them, so the habit formed and stayed.
On the A3 side of Canon’s imageFORCE line, a lot of that list is now in range. Not all of it, and not on every model — so here’s the honest version of what runs where.
What it can run
Six categories of work worth reconsidering
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Long sheets up to 12-5/8" × 51-1/4"
Banners and hanging signage
Retail banners, indoor hanging signs, promotional signage, directional signage
Availability: C7165 prints up to 10 long sheets at a time from the bypass tray. The C5100, 6100, C3100 and 4100 Series handle them one sheet at a time.
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Synthetic water-resistant media
Anything that gets wet or handled hard
Menus, outdoor signage, maps, travel guides, event passes, wristbands, tags and labels, coasters
Availability: imageFORCE C7165 only — up to 40 sheets at a time from the bypass tray.
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Coated A3 stock
Direct mail and marketing collateral
Direct mail, brochures, flyers and posters, postcards, catalogs, calendars
Availability: C7165 runs 40 sheets of coated stock at a time. Other A3 models take coated stock one sheet at a time.
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Tri-fold, Z-fold, C-fold and booklets
Folded and bound pieces
Brochures, newsletters, program booklets, mailers
Availability: Folding and booklet applications are A3-model features and depend on the finisher configured on your machine.
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Envelopes, postcards, business cards, label sheets
Small-format odds and ends
Postcards and business cards up to 5" × 7", envelopes, label sheets
Availability: Available across A3 models; stock weight and tray source vary by configuration.
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Up to 12" × 18", including duplex
Oversized everyday work
Oversized reports, 11" × 17" spreads, presentation pieces
Availability: Standard across the A3 imageFORCE line, duplex included.
Long sheets, synthetic media, booklets and folding are A3 features. The A4 and desktop imageFORCE models — C611, 710, C1333, 1440, 1643, C1700 and C1935P — are built for everyday document work rather than specialty media.
Why it works now
Two things that used to make specialty media not worth the trouble
Office machines have technically accepted odd stock for years. What kept people from using it was the fiddling — and that’s the part that changed.
Media sensors read the paper for you
The device detects paper type and weight on the multipurpose tray on its own. Nobody has to know the gsm of the stock in their hand or dig through a settings menu before a run — which is the step that usually ends with someone giving up and emailing the job to a print shop. Heavy, thin, plain and coated are all identified automatically.
Air assist keeps coated sheets from sticking
Coated stock clings to itself, which is why most office machines will only feed it one sheet at a time. Two fans separate the sheets as they feed, which is what makes a 40-sheet coated run possible on the C7165 instead of a 40-sheet hand-feeding exercise.
Media sensors and air assist are C7165 features. They’re the reason that machine is the one we point at when a customer’s real goal is pulling work back in-house rather than just printing documents faster.
Model by model
Which A3 machine does what
| Model | Speed | Media capability |
|---|---|---|
| imageFORCE C7165 | 65 ppm color/BW | Everything below — long sheets, synthetic, coated at volume, media sensors, air assist |
| imageFORCE C5100 Series | 70 / 60 / 50 / 40 ppm color | Long sheets and coated stock, one sheet at a time |
| imageFORCE 6100 Series | 70 / 60 / 55 ppm B&W | Long sheets and coated stock, one sheet at a time |
| imageFORCE 8100 Series | 105 / 95 / 86 ppm B&W | High-volume B&W with professional finishing; 9,360-sheet maximum paper capacity |
| imageFORCE C3100 Series | 50 / 35 / 30 / 26 ppm color | Long sheets and coated stock, one sheet at a time; compact footprint |
| imageFORCE 4100 Series | 45 / 35 / 25 ppm B&W | Long sheets and coated stock, one sheet at a time; compact footprint |
Speeds are letter-size, per Canon’s published figures. Finishing and tray configuration affect which applications are available on a given installation.
Being honest about it
When bringing it in-house actually pays — and when it doesn’t
We’d rather tell you where this argument runs out than oversell it. In-house production wins on specific shapes of work:
- Short runs and quick turnarounds. Fifty event programs needed tomorrow is a job where the shop’s minimum order and three-day turnaround are the whole problem.
- Anything that changes. Versioned price sheets, dated signage, personalized mailers — work you’d otherwise reprint externally every time a detail moves.
- Confidential material. Documents you’d rather not hand to a third party at all.
- The long tail. The one-off banner, the replacement menu, the sign for a door — individually too small to be worth a purchase order.
Where it doesn’t pay: long production runs. If you’re printing five thousand brochures, a commercial press still wins on cost per piece and always will. An office MFP is competing on turnaround, flexibility and the elimination of minimum orders — not on unit price at volume. If genuine production volume is the need, that’s a conversation about imagePRESS instead.
Worth knowing
The output quality holds up
None of this matters if the banner looks like it came off an office copier. The A3 imageFORCE models print at what Canon calls an industry-leading 4800 dpi, with automatic color consistency built in — we broke that engineering down in a separate post on print quality.
If you want the specification sheets and brochures for any of these models, they’re collected in our imageFORCE quick reference, and the full current lineup is on the Canon copiers page.
Bring us your outsourcing invoices
Show us what you sent out last year and we’ll tell you honestly which of it a machine in your office could have produced — and which of it is better left where it is. Local Indianapolis techs, all-inclusive service, no pressure.
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