Chris Taylor with the DC-615.
Since installing a new Duplo DC-615 cutter-creaser to finish its Xerox 700 output, Offsite Digital in Chelmsford has cut production times, improved quality and secured profitable new contracts, it said.
Two years ago the company concentrated on large format work for pop-up and point of sale graphics and banners. Other types of print work was offered but was frequently out-sourced, which ate away the profit.
Earlier this year, the company decided to buy a Xerox 700 light production press with a view to bringing more short-run colour work in-house. It quickly found that although it was happy with the colour output of the new machine, time-consuming and inconsistent finishing was hampering the new service.
The solution was the Duplo DC-615 digital finisher, purchased from dealer The Finishing Point. According to Chris O’Brien, director at TFP: ‘short-run colour work can be a highly profitable area for printers if they can produce the goods efficiently. The DC-615 is the best product on the market right now because it can complete a low volume production run quickly, accurately and without a dedicated machine minder or wasting any print during setup. It ticks all the boxes.’
Chris Taylor, sales director at Offsite, explained: ‘We are a small company without dedicated operators, so everyone is trained to use the finishing equipment. From one operator to the next we found big variations in production time and quality – especially when it came to guillotining tricky jobs like business cards. We promise our customers excellent quality and a fast turnaround so we needed a more automated and consistent finisher, the DC-615 has certainly proved to be that.’
The company uses the DC-615’s imposition software to lay out work in set templates. These templates are pre-programmed into the DC-615 so SRA3 prints can be taken directly from the Xerox, placed into the Duplo and run immediately. The machine does all the cutting and any creasing automatically without any operator intervention. Mr Taylor said: ‘We average 20-30 short run jobs a day. At busy times we can load the machine and walk away. It gets on with finishing the job and we can focus on other areas like selling! When we come back to the machine the work is ready to pack.’
Mr Taylor noted that although the company will always have place for its guillotine, especially on the higher volume work, the DC-615 is now the finisher of choice for short runs. He concluded: ‘working together, the Xerox and the Duplo have enabled us to make even the smallest job profitable and we are delighted with the impact the machines have made on the business.’
Contact: www.offsitedigital.co.uk and www.duplouk.com
