Finishing & Screen Printing

Richardson Printing increases it folding automation

Monday 29. July 2013 - Richardson Printing, which provides a quality commercial printing service to London agencies but also some trade services, has turned to Heidelberg for a new folder. A Stahlfolder TH 56 will be delivered to the Lowestoft company in September.

The company, part of the Micropress Group, had decided it needed a six plate rather than a four plate first unit but it had had no intention of going for a highly automated model, until it visited the Heidelberg showroom.
“The automation on the Stahlfolder TH 56 took my breath away,” says John Richardson, partner. “We are constantly changing formats and this will make it so easy and cut makeready times considerably. We run with one folder so it has to be robust and flexible. “
The company runs a double day shift and all its finishing facilities are available, including folding, die-cutting and laminating (up to B1) which are services well used by other printers as well as direct clients. The Autoobond laminator features a Heidelberg feeder head.
Stahlfolder automation doesn’t just increases throughput and the accuracy of folding. The benefit for the operator is speed and simplicity of set up. If a job is being set up for the first time all that needs to be entered is the sheet length, width and paper thickness and once this is done a folding imposition is selected from the comprehensive library stored on the machine.
With these input the Stahlfolder automatically adjusts plate and roller settings throughout the machine. Any additional minor adjustments to optimise production, such as angling one plate backstop, are set from the control panel and compensating changes that might need to be made down the machine are done automatically. All of these job settings are stored and so when a repeat of the same job comes along , all that is necessary is for the operator to download them from the memory and the machine is ready to go, slashing makeready times even further.