New Cutter Brings Safety Features to NJ In-plant

Ray Andrejcik goes to school every day. As Office Services coordinator at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, N.J., he manages the day-to-day operations of the print shop and mailroom. With only two co-workers, his team produces 1.5 million pieces of work annually, including work for the campus in downtown Trenton.

Operator Bill Peroni handles the majority of the work performed with the new Challenge 30.5˝ paper cutter installed at Mercer County Community College.

When he recently needed to replace a 30.5˝ Baum paper cutter, he turned to Colter & Peterson for a reconditioned Challenge unit of the same size. The cutter, with safety features and a new electronics package, was installed in February and is already saving time and raising the in-plant’s production levels.

“We bought the Baum cutter in 2007 from an outside source but had Colter & Peterson service it. The machine had no safety features and the microprocessor could not store any job information,” laments Andrejcik. “We did repairs as needed but the microprocessor finally quit and the technician could not revive it. We decided to buy the Challenge because we needed a machine that was reliable and it was in the right price range.”

Besides serving Mercer County Community College’s two campuses, Andrejcik and his employees handle shared services for Mercer and West Windsor counties and Hamilton Township. They rely on two black-and-white Ricoh 8110s and a Ricoh Pro 901 to print 8x11˝ and 13x19˝ work, and most department requests are in the 20,000-piece range.

Adding the Microcut COLOR WS electronics package has taken the in-plant’s cutting to another plateau. User-friendly, it guides correct position movement of the blade faster and more accurately with computer-controlled precision. The 8˝ wide-format touch screen display programs and stores job cut information and allows for quick and simple set-up.

“C&P did a good job of educating and telling us that, as a school, why our cutting system should have safety features,” says Andrejcik. “They also helped us with the price quote. The college has a huge purchasing department and quotes are necessary for any equipment we plan to buy that exceeds $7,000.”

Andrejcik says the Challenge’s output is being driven by the Microcut COLOR WS system.

“It was only a few years ago where we printed 1.2 million pieces a year. Our output increases every year and with the new electronics, it will help since we can now pre-program our cuts. With the Baum we had to punch in the information for each individual cut,” he recalls. “Now we make four, five or six different cuts in the same amount of time. It makes the Challenge a very efficient machine.”