By Olivia Cahoon
Meeting deadlines and maintaining quick turnarounds requires the right equipment on hand. A strong finishing arsenal allows printers to meet a variety of short run, fast turn jobs without any delays. Here, we look at several print shops that rely on select tools to meet deadlines and maintain customer satisfaction.
Efficient Marketing
Founded in 1983, Hatteras is a full-service creative production and printing company in Tinton Falls, NJ. The shop focuses on collaborative approaches to identify challenges and solutions for creative, printing, and distribution needs.
Hatteras started with four employees in a small airplane hangar. The shop originally offered offset lithography and provided services throughout NJ. Today, it operates out of a 180,000-square foot facility with 300 employees and provides bindery and finishing, data processing and mailing, kitting and fulfillment, warehousing, web portal solutions, and offset, digital, and large format printing services.
The shop produces a range of products for an array of customers across the pharmaceutical, retail, higher education, and technology markets. It offers marketing collateral, direct mail, point of sale signage, and environmental graphics.
“Our dynamic production capabilities allow us to produce quantities that range from one to one million,” says Bill Duerr, president, Hatteras.
The shop works with a range of media suppliers including GPA Specialty Substrates.
Hatteras uses HP Indigo 7600 and two HP Indigo 10000 printers. Prior to the HP Indigos it employed two Kodak NexPress presses.
According to Duerr, the HP Indigo presses were chosen because the shop felt the technology, quality, and format sizes provide the shop with the type of dynamic required to service customer needs.
The HP Indigo 7600 press prints up to 160 color pages per minute (ppm) with seven color support. It handles media up to 13×19 inches in width and is compatible with more than 2,500 substrates for jobs that use dark, transparent, metallic, and recycled papers.
The HP Indigo 10000 is a 29-inch format press that prints 3,450 full size sheets per hour (sph) and 4,600 sph using Enhanced Productivity Mode.
In addition, the shop features a full-service, in-house bindery and fulfillment department to keep projects on course. Hatteras finishing services range from simple trimming and folding to complex die cutting, folding, gluing, and custom hand assembly. In the last three years, several new digital finishing solutions have been added. Among its finishing lineup is a Harris & Bruno Coating System, a Zünd flatbed cutter, and several pieces from Standard Finishing.
Prior to purchasing finishing equipment, Duerr says that Hatteras researched flexible machines powered by adequate technology. With its latest investments, Hatteras’ finishing operation brings together all the required pieces to construct its clients’ projects.
The Harris and Bruno ExcelCoat ZR30 offline UV and AQ coating system incorporates a chamber and anilox metering system and lays down matte, soft touch, AQ, specialty UV, and gloss. The system features a coating width up to 30.25 inches and a full-length vacuum system that prevents fires.
For cutting, the shop uses the Zünd S3 M-1600 digital cutting system. The S3 M-1600 is 1,330×1,630 millimeters. The S3 cutter features an acrylic vacuum plate that holds down material and is adjustable across the machine’s width. For tool setup, the cutting system uses an automated initialization system that helps the cutter determine the proper cutting depth.
Also included in the Hatteras finishing lineup is the Standard Horizon CRF-362 Creaser Folder, SmartSlitter, and the StitchLiner 5500 with Viva camera verification system.
The Standard Horizon CRF-362 Creaser Folder performs on light and heavy stocks—coated or uncoated. Creasing and folding is completed in one pass to process applications like book covers, greeting cards, marketing, and menus. The device is configured with seven-fold patterns and six cover creasing patterns like spine, hinge, and flap creasing. The CRF-362 handles sheet sizes up to 14.33×34 inches and reaches speeds up to 5,000 sph with one crease and one-fold.
It also operates the Standard Horizon SmartSlitter sheet cutter and creaser, an all-in-one device that includes slit, gutter cut, edge-trim, cross-cut, perforate, and crease in one pass. The SmartSlitter handles sheets up to 14.33×26.37 inches. The Skip Perforation cassette allows skip perforation for checks, coupons, and tickets.
The StitchLiner 5500 is designed to bridge the gap between existing flat sheet collating and conventional high-volume saddlestitching lines. Flat-sheet signatures are fed from the SpeedVAC collator to produce true saddlestitched booklets with full-bleed trimming. The StitchLiner 5500 creates up to 11,000 two-up booklets per hour or with the HOF high-speed sheet feeder for digitally collated output, up to 27,000 sph.
“We chose this equipment because we felt it gave us a versatile suite of digital finishing solutions that allows us to utilize technology to drive efficiencies in our manufacturing area,” comments Duerr.
Finishing technology expands to meet the growing print needs of print providers. In the finishing space, Duerr notices better technology, quicker make readies, and less reliance on operator expertise.
Emerging Providers
Launched this Summer, Minuteman Press has three employees in Fort Worth, TX. The shop offers design, marketing, printing, and promotion in a 1,380-square foot workspace for the Fort Worth Metroplex community. Its mission is to provide clients with the highest quality products and services in a timely fashion and at a competitive price.
“We design and print anything you can put your name, logo, or text on,” say James and Sheryl Francis, owners, Minuteman Press. The shop’s departments include customer service, finishing, prepress, printing, and sales.
Minutemen Press creates apparel, banners, booklets, booth materials, brochures, business cards, flags, flyers, promotional items, signs, and vehicle graphics. The shop uses multiple forms of media like glass, metal, paper, plastic, and vinyl from multiple sources.
“I like the flexibility and power of being able to print on a range of stock while keeping the initial setup costs very low,” comment the Francises.
The shop utilizes Xerox digital presses for all of its digital printing, including the Xerox Versant 180. According to the company, it is the first in North America to acquire the Xerox Versant 180 digital presses.
The shop chose the Versant due to its functionality. The Xerox Versant 180 handles a 13×26-inch maximum sheet size and prints 80 ppm. It is compatible with a range of media including bright papers, business cards, coated and uncoated papers, embossed, glossy brochures, greeting cards, labels, polyester, tabs, and window decals.
Minuteman Press’ finishing offerings include binding, cutting, folding, laminating, padding, and stapling. Its primary digital finishing products are included in its Xerox machines.
The Versant 180 itself is capable of binding, booklet making, decurling, finishing, folding, inserting with a 250 sheet Xerox Inserter, punching, stacking, and trimming. The SquareFold Trimmer Module allows the press to inline square fold and face trim to produce high-value brochures and booklets.
It is also equipped with the GBC AdvancedPunch Pro, which enables the device to double punch on large sheets with full-bleed processing and die-set detection. It is a compact hole punching unit that eliminates manual punching.
The Versant 180 binds using GBC eWire, a fully automated inline binding system using traditional twin-loop wire binding. The GBC eWire runs inline with Xerox printers and the GBC AdvancedPunch Pro.
Despite using the Versant 180 for most of its digital finishing, it also utilizes uses standalone equipment. Minutemen Press’ other finishing equipment includes the Baum 714 XLT Folder, Challenge Padding Clamp, Salco Rapid 106E electric stapler, Spiral Sprinter 335R6 laminator, and Triumph 5255 cutter.
In the future, the Francises say the shop may add a booklet trimmer for speed and ease of use. “The Xerox digital presses produce completed booklets, but if you have more than six to eight signatures, the paper creep requires an edge trim, which currently must be done manually.”
Minutemen Press obtained its finishing equipment as part of the Minutemen Press franchise. “Minuteman has researched the equipment and as part of their equipment package, the brands that have proven to be reliable and accompanied with top level support were chosen,” they comment.
Regarding finishing trends, automation and speed technology is improving.
Flat Cards and Photobooks
Launched in 1998, GlobalSoft Digital Solutions serves the marketing, CRM, and internal communications needs of large and small clients. Headquartered in Mahwah, NJ, GlobalSoft approaches all of its communications from targeted, multi-wave direct mail campaigns to conference and trade show teaser programs.
GlobalSoft is owned by Creel Offset as one of its three digital plants. GlobalSoft’s Digital Lizard digital printing plants are located in Hayden, ID and Las Vegas, NV. Combined, these companies use a fleet of digital presses and a complete line of finishing equipment to produce products and services to grow businesses.
GlobalSoft has clients in the automotive, financial, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical industries. The company helps its customers feel confident they are taking the best approaches to ensure their marketing programs are delivered on time, within budget, and without sacrificing creative and communications impact.
GlobalSoft uses HP Indigo 7800s and HP Latex grand format printers. “We chose this brand back in 2001 because we fell in love with the technology and quality,” says Patrick Meredith, GM, GlobalSoft.
“We truly felt it was offset quality print that had the power of personalization like no other. We have been loyal to HP and vice versa since then,” he continues.
Multiple finishing devices create a range of applications for the shop. To die cut flat cards into different shapes and sizes, GlobalSoft uses the Standard Horizon RD-4055DMC Die Cutter. The RD-4055 has dual magnetic cylinders to simultaneous die cut and crease or score short-run products from both sides of the sheet. It also features hole punch, perforate, round corner, and slit functions. The RD-4055 handles a maximum sheet size of 15.74×21.65 inches.
For binding photobooks, the shop depends on the fully automated four-clamp Standard Horizon BQ-470 Perfect Binder, which produces up to 1,350 bound books per hour and features an LCD touch screen. Its interchangeable glue tanks support EVA and PUR adhesives.
GlobalSoft’s foil letter pressing and foil card designs are completed on the Kluge EHD Series and Therm-O-Type’s NSF Excel Hot Foil Stamping Press. The EHD Series is a 14×22-inch foil stamper that accommodates sheets up to 17×24.75 inches. It’s used for applications like announcements, business cards, greeting cards, labels, packaging, and security printing.
The NSF Excel binds and foil embosses, die- and kiss cuts, imprints, numbers, perforates, and scores.
Finishing Trends
On demand finishing tools enable print providers to offer fast turnarounds and short runs. It’s important that print providers invest in strong finishing equipment to meet client demands. Finishing trends expand to offer better technology, quicker turnarounds, and less operator intervention.
September2017, DPS Magazine
