Know When To Fold Them

"With proper use and maintenance, they should last another 10-plus years," he predicts.

But folders marketed in the 1980s don't necessarily tout the tools an in-plant needs to handle every 21st century job that comes down the pike.

Nancy Zombolas, graphics and printing supervisor for the City of Rockville, Maryland, says her shop was outsourcing the folding of everything printed on coated stock due to problems with "scuffing" of the ink. Her 20-year-old Baum 417B folder had no way to manage right-angle folds, so those pieces also had to be outsourced. Zombolas recently replaced the shop's dinosaur with a new Baum 2020 pile feeder folder so all this work can be kept in-house.