Church Eliminates Marks on Digital Prints
The transition to digital printing is creeping into every corner of the in-plant market. Even the small in-plant at Grace Community Church, in Arleta, Calif., has seen the change.
“More and more of the press work has gone to digital over the last two years,” remarks Charles Yamshak, who runs the church’s print shop, with one part-time assistant. Though the in-plant still uses its two-color offset press, its Ricoh Pro C900 and Ricoh 1106 have put out a quarter of a million more impressions this year than last year, he says.
With that digital growth, though, came an increase in problems on the finishing end. The in-plant’s friction-fed Rollem Champion 990 perforating/scoring/slitting machine left visible marks on the materials that Yamshak had worked so hard on.
“I needed to upgrade,” he says.
So recently, the Los Angeles-area in-plant replaced that old 19˝ Rollem with a new air-fed 24˝ Rollem ETR Champion. It boasts a more sophisticated guiding system and a deep pile feeder that handles stacks up to 30˝ deep.
“This way, one person can operate the machine and just let it run,” Yamshak says.
The new Rollem ETR Champion runs stocks ranging from 16-lb. onion skin to 40-pt. board, and cross-grained papers are handled flawlessly. So far it has been used to produce items like camp booklets, cards and letters with perforated, tear-off cards.
Yamshak is particularly proud of one modification he made. He rolled the right-angle section of the shop’s MBO folder to the delivery end of the ETR to form an inline operation that allows him to perf or score through the ETR and deliver into the folder, producing a perforated, scored and folded piece in one operation. Because that section of the folder is powered independently through a separate converter box, the main section of the folder can still fold other jobs.
Getting funding for the new device was not hard, Yamshak says, once he showed the church how a new machine would eliminate the marking and improve the quality.
“They could see the benefits of upgrading,” he says. “This new equipment...has added a new dimension to the variety of digital jobs we do.”
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.
