The team at John Brailsford Printers
Rotherham-based printer, John Brailsford Printers, has added a Horizon SPF-200/FC-200A with two VAC-600 Air-Suction collators and a Horizon BQ-270V perfect binder following a company-wide operational review.
‘The impact on productivity has been enormous,’ explained owner and managing director John Brailsford. ‘It is a huge investment. We don’t view the return on investment we consider the return in terms of labour and time savings. We had quite a few jobs that needed collating and hand marrying. Now, with the twin towers, we can handle a range of jobs quickly and easily.’
He continued, ‘We had a 2000 run, 48 page, bi-monthly that we had to collate and hand marry. That took three to four hours and now it takes 45 minutes. That alone is a saving of £600 a year.
The 4500 bph JDF-ready Horizon SPF/FC-200A replaced a Horizon stitcher that was 16 years old. It features a 200 programme job memory storage for instant recall, an icon-based touch-screen for job set-up and two VAC-Turbo 600 Power Collators with 12 stations.
‘Our old system was a good advert for Horizon equipment and the dealer sold it on,’ said Mr Brailsford. ‘The technology and automation has changed a lot but the new system is very easy to use and the deeper bins mean less operator input is required. Before we might have had to fill them up four or five times now it is only once. We also use the collators for carbonless sets and again our operators can fill up the bins and leave them.
‘We adore the SPF/FC 200a. We have installed some additional software that enables us to take pre-collated printed sheets in reverse order to create a block for the bookletmaker. That means they just need top and bottom trimming otherwise you would need to trim each set.’ he said.
The Horizon BQ270V was bought to improve the in-house binding capabilities offered, and has a cycle speed of 500 cph. As well as completing the entire set-up and fine-tuning, its icon-based colour touchscreen also accesses the on-board 200 job memory store.
