Colorado In-plant Scores With New Folder

Tim Mulvey knew his Baum 750 tabletop folder, a fixture at Arapahoe County Printing Services since 1982, had seen better days.

"I have been here for eight years, and when I took over it was not well maintained," says Mulvey, who manages the three-person municipal in-plant in Littleton, Colo. "I rebuilt it, but that only lasted about four years because it had been in such bad condition."

The letterfold was no longer working, and the machine was not very reliable. It was time for a change.

The good news was that since the old folder was in such bad shape, the county allowed Mulvey to replace the machine on an emergency basis. The bad news? He was only approved to spend $11,500.

Mulvey received quotes from three vendors. xpdex came back with the lowest bid, for a Morgana DocuFold Pro, which was installed at the in-plant last October.

"I did some research on the Morgana, which I never heard of before," Mulvey admits with a laugh. "And it got really good reviews. I went and did a test on it and really liked the simplicity of it."

One of the functions that Mulvey has been impressed with is the ability to score and perf on the Morgana machine.

"I don't have to send jobs out anymore to score or put them on the press to score," Mulvey notes. "Scoring was a capability on the old Baum machine but it could no longer hold registration."

Mulvey points out that the Morgana DocuFold Pro has proven to be a simple piece of equipment to operate, and is very user friendly.

The in-plant is home to three Xerox machines: a Nuvera 144, a Color 800 digital press and a 4127 production machine. The shop also has two offset presses: an ABDick 9850 that is used strictly for envelope printing, and a two-color ABDick 9995.

About 75 percent of what goes through the Morgana comes off the Xerox machines, Mulvey says, since the shop is doing a lot of print-on-demand work, usually producing quantities of 500 or less.

"It is a good fold even off the color machine," he boasts. "It is not cracking, and it doesn't matter what grain direction I am going in, I am getting a good tight fold."

Two of the bigger customers for the in-plant are the county Human Services department and the detention facility at the Sheriff's Office. But the shop handles work from 11 county departments with 23 divisions.

"We pretty much do all of the printing for the county with the exception of election ballots," Mulvey says.