From the Editor: Off to Warmer Places

As winter rages here in the Northeast, I’ve had two opportunities to fly to warm places recently (ironic, due to my legendary love of cold weather). In early February I headed to sunny Delray Beach, FL, to help Canon Solutions America celebrate its second anniversary. Executives painted a positive picture of continued growth and discussed upcoming production inkjet printers, like the sheetfed Océ VarioPrint i300 (formerly known as Project Niagara).

Just a week later, I found myself in Los Angeles, where residents have apparently never heard of winter, judging by their blank looks when I told them it was 10 degrees back home. I was there for the Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A. “Art of Disruption” event, which previewed cutting-edge technologies like iris scanning, robots, 3D printing and much more.

Being in LA gave me the long-sought opportunity to finally visit the City of Los Angeles’ Publishing Services Division. I took a cab across downtown LA to the Piper Technical Center, also home to the world's largest rooftop airport, the LAPD Hooper Heliport. After navigating my way through the large parking garage, I found the in-plant and met with Acting Director Gerald St. Onge, who has overseen the 34-employee, two-shift operation for almost six years now, since the untimely death of former director Michael Leighton. A 20-year city employee, Gerald came from LA's Supply Services Division, and quickly grew to enjoy the printing world.

The spacious 50,000-square-foot facility includes several offset presses, the centerpiece being an automated five-color Komori Lithrone SX 29, which operators were setting up for a job when we stopped to chat with them. The shop also runs a four-color Heidelberg Quickmaster DI, plus some older manroland presses.

The digital print section includes a Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS C8000 and a trio of Konica Minolta bizhub PRESS 1250s. The in-plant’s three satellite locations also run Konica Minolta printers, with a new digital color device on its way. Gerald says he wants to push more work from the main plant to the satellites to take advantage of the capacity there.

One of the latest growth areas at the 108-year-old in-plant, he told me, has been in wide-format printing using a removable vinyl substrate. He got the idea to move into this business when he spotted several pieces of wall art in the controller’s office one day. After some research, he and Richard Malvino, prepress supervisor, found Lexjet Print-N-Stick Fabric, a removable vinyl product, and have been using the shop’s four HP and Epson wide-format printers ever since to turn out decorative wall art, which now adorns the walls of several city buildings.

In the prepress area, Richard gave me a demonstration of the shop's Agfa :Avalon computer-to-plate system, which can burn four plates in just 20 minutes. The in-plant's next update, he told me, will likely be to upgrade the :Avalon CTP to version 9.

Publishing Services enjoys a good relationship with the mayor, Gerald said, and he has built a rapport with city council and city departments. One of shop’s most challenging jobs, he said, is printing the city’s budget, which is required by law to be delivered by April 20. Files typically arrive just a few days before that, and staff works non stop until it’s finished.

From there I took a cab to visit the Church of Scientology International Dissemination and Distribution Center. Owen Varrall and Angela Furness proudly showed off their 185,000-square-foot facility, which features a six-unit Goss Sunday 2000 web press, a five-color Heidelberg Speedmaster XL 105 sheetfed press and a continuous-feed HP Indigo W7200 digital press. Impressively, none of the operators had any printing experience when they started. All were trained from scratch at Cal Poly and Rochester Institute of Technology. Within each area (printing, bindery, etc.) employees are cross trained, and they wear headsets to communicate with one another over the sound of the presses.

Opened just five years ago, the in-plant cranks out millions of magazines, brochures, direct mail pieces and educational materials each month, in 17 languages. The church is clearly a strong believer in the power of print, and judging by the investment it put into the print center, there is little danger that this in-plant will ever be outsourced.

With high ceilings and plenty of open space for expansion, the in-plant is extremely clean and orderly. Equipment is positioned so that work flows efficiently in one direction. The facility handles much more than ink on paper too. From dye-sublimation printing and embroidering of garments, to decorative wood cutting and metal work, to audio visual and more are all part of the 106-employee operation. The facility is one of two in-plants operated by the church. Its Bridge Publications division runs a nearby a digital book manufacturing plant to produce copies of L. Ron Hubbard’s books.

It was great to finally visit these two impressive in-plants, and nice to experience the oddity of 80-degree temperatures in winter—though the three-degree slap in the face I received when I got home sure woke me up quickly.