New Cutter Eases Safety Concerns in Anaheim

Installing a new Challenge Titan 265 cutter has improved safety at the Anaheim Union High School District. Standing with the new cutter are operators John Atwood (left) and Kevin Moffat.

School safety is a hot-button issue across the country. And while your first thought might be about how to make classrooms safer, that theory can also extend into school in-plants.

Tim Ericson, graphic production manager at Anaheim Union High School District, feels he has ensured his in-plant employees’ safety with the recent installation of a Challenge Titan 265 cutter.

“One of the primary reasons for me was the safety features,” Ericson confides, noting that the Southern California shop’s old Seybold cutter didn’t have safety curtains or a closed rear. “We have a super experienced staff that is very safety conscience. Having devices that are as safe as possible is very important, particularly with that class of equipment.”

Ericson says an injury involving a cutter is obviously very serious, so he strives to do everything possible to protect his staff of six full-time employees.

“Also, the reality is that the Seybold was from an era when we were still a heavy offset shop, and now we are converted totally to digital,” Ericson points out. “We could now use a smaller footprint.”

The new Challenge Titan is a 26.5˝ model, while the Seybold was a 40˝ machine.

“We are buying a lot more cut sheets now, so our cutting on a daily basis is a lot lower than it was 10 years ago,” Ericson explains, adding that the shop went totally digital about five years ago.

Since a digital front end had been added to the Seybold equipment, the transition to the new setup on the Challenge cutter was pretty simple, Ericson says. Training on the Challenge Titan was provided during the installation process.

“That one training session got the guys up and running,” Ericson states. “The seamless transition speaks volumes because sometimes the old dogs don’t like new tricks. They like the tools they are used to and want to keep them. But no one has had an issue at all, and to me, that is fairly high praise.”

Ericson says the shop primarily uses the new cutter to trim down sheets to size for jobs, particularly for card stock.

“We do a lot of card stock covers for school reports,” he says. “This allows more flexibility of what is stored at the shop. We just stock parent sheets and cut to fit certain jobs. That lets us minimize inventory.”

Ericson admits the old Seybold cutter was almost at the point where it couldn’t be serviced any more. In fact, there were some key components that, if they failed, would not be able to be replaced.

“We wanted to be proactive about it instead of waiting for a failure to happen and then have to scramble,” he explains, noting that the shop lore was that the Seybold actually had come off an old battleship and was repurposed.

“At least that is the story around the water cooler,” he concludes with a laugh. “I don’t know whether that is true or not. But it certainly was not a new device.”