One-pass Presses

The vast majority of printers stick with formats smaller than 40″. How come? In most cases, they are a perfect fit for long-established clients. But let's be honest: Equipment in most shops—from platemakers and cutters to pallet jacks—already is geared to handle these "right sized" formats. But faced with a choice, it's a tough call.

That's because smaller presses have been showered with the same automation add-ons, coaters and flexibility to print on a variety of substrates as the larger presses. The argument that three-quarter-sized 29″ (6-up) or half-sized 20″ (4-up) presses were small enough to manage manually faltered years ago, as the machines grew in length. Automatic blanket washers, auto plate changing, consoles with sheet scanners integrated to ink controls, and CIP3 are increasingly standard features—not to mention perfecting and inline coating.

These smaller-format machines are far more plentiful than full-sized presses, easily outselling them five-to-one by some accounts. The rise in popularity of the 6-up format, falling between the half- and full-sized machines and first popularized by MAN Roland, has fed the appeal of this less-than-full-sized niche.

Of the 45 sheetfed models included in Graphic Arts Monthly's first annual small- and mid-size survey (p.26), a dozen are three-quarter size. Thirty-two 20″ to 29″ presses are offered in 5-color models—and more than half of those are perfectors, while nearly all offer the connectivity of CIP3/4 options. Thirty-four presses have (or soon will have) inline coating and hybrid UV availability; and all but 10 on the list offer infrared (IR) drying as an option. Another key factor is speeds and feeds. While the slowest top speed on the chart is 8,000 sheets per hour, two machines—from MAN Roland and KBA—register a maximum 18,000 sph, with 24 models boasting speeds of 15,000 sph or faster. Two 40″ machines have hit 18,000 sph, but it's a greater challenge for 8-ups.

Metzgers Printing, a general commercial firm in Toledo, OH, studied the 40″ press market in detail. With a 40″ press on order, management shifted gears at the last minute and decided to stay in its half-size niche, adding instead a 20×28″ Sakurai 672 6-color with inline coater. With three Sakurai presses in this size (4-, 5- and 6-color), Metzgers has 15 cylinders churning out half-size work using the same size plate. A scanning densitometer is situated between two of them. One-pass productivity with the inline coater allows Metzgers to instantaneously cure the sheets and send them quickly to be finished. The outcome? The firm reports that it is up 50% in productivity, and sales have increased 30% in the latest quarter. Metzgers projects a 25% gain in sales for this year.

Quick-turn work within tight constraints for mailing deadlines accounts for the majority of work produced by 39-employee Integrated Graphics, a St. Charles, IL commercial print and mailing shop. Streamlining offset printing with inline coating and perfecting allows it to move right into finishing and mailing without delay. As it moved to a new 44,000-sq.ft. plant 13 months ago, Integrated decided to install a 28″ press, the Komori NL 628 6-color with inline coating. A year later it followed up with a 6-up format press, the 20×29″ Komori Spica 4-color perfector that was installed last November.

"The key for us is set-up and turnaround," says Keith Murphy, Integrated Graphics' president. Murphy calls the 40″ market "cut-throat," a sentiment echoed by others focused on small-format work, and says the half-size press is a niche they fell into. "Half-size presses are much more versatile than a 40″ press, but they are every bit as automated. We use coating as much for looks as for fast drying to move to finishing."

UBS Printing Group in Corona, CA, near Los Angeles, transitioned to packaging with KBA presses. In its pressroom's raised catwalk, a 29″ 6-color Rapida 74 with inline coater (installed last July) runs between a pair of 41″ Rapida 105s. Gilbert Ashdown, who oversees UBS' 78,000-sq.ft. plant, says, "We raised the presses 14″ so we can run board more easily." The thicker stocks fill a pile faster. Ashdown likes the ability to handle a wide variety of stock—from 60-lb. book to 48-pt. board.

Also hoisting the press to allow higher pile delivery is Capitol City Press in Olympia, WA. The printer set its new 6-color 28″ Komori with coater atop a pair of 12″ steel I-beams, to allow it to deliver bigger piles.

Complete Printing Services, a high-end commercial print shop in Marietta, GA, positioned itself to meet the increasing demands for aqueous coating, as well as process colors plus additional PMS and metallic inks, by installing a 6-color Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 74 perfecting press with coater and Axis Control. Kelly Carlin, owner and CEO of Complete, says the press allows the company to print both short and long runs efficiently and improve its make-ready times significantly. In short, it gets more jobs through the shop.

Versatile Card Technology (VCT), a leading manufacturer of plastic cards in South Plainfield, NJ, uses a MAN Roland 500 29″ 6-color press with coater and full UV capabilities to produce a range of plastic cards, including secure products for MasterCard, Visa and Discover, as well as non-secure promotional and ID cards. Nearly 90% of the jobs are printed on 13-mil PVC plastic, as well as 19- and 24 mil sheets and proprietary materials. VCT prints 72 cards up on a sheet, most with a separate front and back sheet that have overlay applied and are then laminated together. Many multi-pass jobs requiring tight registration from pass to pass are the printer's mainstay.

It's not uncommon for press size selection to be dictated by plant size—especially in those instances where a firm is well established in an inner-city site. That was the case for Crawford Printing, which needed to replace an aging 6-color 28″ at its Burbank, CA plant. But Jerry Crawford, president, also wanted to move into five-over-five perfecting—which could have made for a footprint that extended out to the delivery dock. The unusual staggered format of the dedicated perfector J-Print press from Akiyama, which prints both sides without flipping the sheet, fit within the same floor space as the 6-color. "Since both sides of the sheet are printed in one pass, the registration is absolutely perfect," says Crawford.

Demand for more color work prompted Success Printing, a 23-employee commercial shop located in Norwalk, CT, to move up in size and length from its Speedmaster SM52 2-color press to a new Ryobi 755 23×29″ 4-color perfector with coater. The increased automation and 6-up sheet size give the firm more flexibility and advantages when competing for, and winning, work from 40″ printers and providing higher quality and faster throughput.

For Vision Graphics, Loveland, CO, moving to the 6-up, 29″ MAN Roland 500 "allowed us to take smaller jobs from the 700 and put the work where it belongs, on a press with lower consumables costs, faster makereadies and a faster run rate," says Mark Steputis, the company's president. "The immediate result was a reduction in overtime. A lot of our people say we should get another 500 instead of a full-size press, and they have a point. There's a big gap between the performance of the 500 and a 40″ press." (See a related story on p.34.)