Delaware State In-plant Adds CTP, New Press

By Bob Neubauer

Getting film used to be, let’s say, a little inconvenient for the 13-employee Printing and Publishing department at Delaware’s Office of Management and Budget. For years the Dover, Del., in-plant had its film output by a commercial printer across town.

“The film would come back to us and we’d strip it up and burn the plates here,” recounts Dustin Yerkes, shop supervisor. “For a job that we would have to send out for film, it could take a half day”—a whole day if that printer was busy.

To eliminate this lag time once and for all, the in-plant recently installed a Heidelberg Quicksetter 300E computer-to-plate device.

“Our designer can send the file direct to the Quicksetter and we can have a plate out in, say, a half hour,” reports Yerkes—quite a difference!

Those polyester plates are then loaded onto one of the shop’s two new Heidelberg Printmaster 46 presses. The two-color, 12x18˝ presses, which replaced a pair of older Toko presses, came with auto plate feeding and plate ejection, automated blanket wash-up and IR dryers. With speeds in excess of 8,000 sheets per hour, the presses are churning out letterhead, brochures, newsletters and forms at a much faster clip than the old Tokos.

“We’re able to almost do offset jobs as if they were just quick copy,” quips Yerkes.

Plus, he adds, print quality has improved noticeably.

“With the presses we were using, there were a lot of jobs we couldn’t do in-house because the quality just wouldn’t be acceptable,” he says—especially large solid areas. “So we’ll be able to keep more of those jobs in.”

He hopes the presses will bring in new work from state agencies that don’t currently use the shop.

In addition to offset, the in-plant has Xerox DocuTech and DocuColor equipment. A satellite office in Wilmington also has a DocuTech. Another satellite is scheduled to open next year in Georgetown, Del.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.