Finishing & Screen Printing
Autobond Opens New Chapter with USA Installation
Friday 26. November 2010 - When USA printer Odcombe Press decided to invest in a new sheet-fed laminator, the company knew exactly where to go for advice. The La Vergne, TN, based company, about 20 miles from Nashville, is part of the Haynes Publishing group and the UK division had been operating Autobond laminating equipment for the last 25 years at its Somerset premises.
“We did look around at what was new on the market, but there is nothing to match the Autobond models in terms of build construction and quality of lamination,” says group production direction Nigel Clements. “There are very few suppliers that we have come across that are as easy to deal with as Autobond and we have a good relationship with its managing director, John Gilmore.
“When we explained what we needed to achieve, he recommended the redesigned Mini 76 TH, which was launched at Ipex. We trusted Johns opinion and placed the order prior to actually seeing the laminator in operation at the exhibition. One of the big advantages of the new model is its extremely small footprint, which is around 7½ x 4½ feet, as we had a limited space to fit it into.”
Odcombe Press has been the production site for the Hayes automobile manuals for many years and a decision to move printing of the groups coffee book titles from the UK meant that it needed to upgrade its existing laminator, which the company says would not have met the new demands for speed and quality.
The Mini 76 TH is a full size sheet laminator capable of handling stock from A4 (8½” x 11″) up to 76 x 102 cm (30″ x 40″) in size. Stock weight can be from 90 gsm to 650 gsm (60 lb to 24 pt). The rising pile, back separation Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 feeder is equipped with a mill skid plate, allowing a full pallet of print to be loaded directly from the press. Autobond has been able to reduce the size of the laminator by incorporating the feeder, laminator and sheeter within one side plate.
“Our coffee table books cover subjects as diverse as football to chickens, but they all have one thing in common in that they are produced to the highest print quality,” says Mr Clements. “Our printing facilities at Odcombe Press include web offset, sheet-fed and digital presses, and these provide sufficient capacity for the extra work. However, we had to invest in our bindery and the Autobond laminator was one of several items of new equipment for this department.
“Because we print the work of our parent company we know what jobs are in the pipeline and can batch orders to streamline production. Even so, the Mini 76 TH has already been used to laminate successfully a wide variety of stock and formats, including work printed on our Roland 700 and Xerox machines. Autobond trained three of our staff and the Mini 76 TH is now in full production every day.”