Pressroom
Printbylaser takes an Anicolor to cut costs and safeguard margins
Friday 14. August 2009 - Printbylaser in Washington has this month installed a Speedmaster SM 52-4+L Anicolor press, following close on the heels of the Axis Control spectrophotometer it added to its B2 press, an SM 74-5-P, and ahead of delivery of a Prinect Pressroom Management workflow integration tool.
Director Chris Murley says: “After seeing the Anicolor demonstrated at the recent Heidelberg open house we were very impressed with its capabilties and also print quality. We had been analysing our work and realised a lot of the colour demand was for short runs. Seeing make-readies of six or seven minutes with only about 20 waste sheets was impressive. It is the obvious complement to our SM 74.
“It is more cost effective for us because our price structure doesnt change but we can produce litho quality work at lower cost, protecting our profit margin. We are eating into the digital market with this press.”
The company has started with runs of 700, 2000 and 5000 typically but it sees this press as ideal for all standard commercial work in the 100 to 10,000 run range.
The operator reaction has been positive. “Operators have said to me that they didnt believe it would be as quick to set up and run,” says Mr Murley. “We are aware that maintenance is important with this press but we already have good housekeeping procedures in place so thats not a worry,”
At the same time printbylaser has ordered Pressroom Manager and Colour Toolbox which will allow it to colour calibrate in-house. Pressroom Manager is an integration tool which will enable the company to take print data such as paper weight and format to press for automatic set up and also feed back important management information about the efficiency of each job, each press and even the operator.
“Operators can see how they are doing with the reports and with the added feature of plate on demand, they can call up new plates from the press creating less downtime and increasing efficiency” says Mr Murley.
Printbylaser holds ISO 9001 quality and ISO14001 environmental accreditations and is keen to become 12647 colour accredited when the standard comes into operation this year. It handles a range of contract work for the NHS Trusts, local government bodies together with print management firms.