Simon Fraser University Adds Five-color Press

Even successful digital printing operations need a little offset sometimes. Take Simon Fraser University Document Solutions, in Burnaby, British Columbia. In 2006, IPG detailed how this 15-employee in-plant had moved from antiquated offset equipment to state-of-the-art digital printers like a Xerox iGen3 and a DocuColor 6060. The shop didn’t completely abandon offset, though. It retained a four-color 20x29? Heidelberg Speedmaster 74 perfector press. Director Raj Nadrajan acknowledges that the iGen3, great as it is, can’t do everything. When it comes to long runs of high-end publications and marketing brochures, offset is simply more cost effective.

The only problem with the Speedmaster, though, was that jobs requiring a fifth color—anything with the school’s new logo, for example—needed another pass through the four-color press.

So last fall the in-plant resolved this situation by installing a new five-color Heidelberg Speedmaster 52 with a coater. Not only has the shop’s productivity soared, the in-plant is keeping more work in-house as a result.

“We have captured a lot of work that used to go out,” Nadrajan says. “Keeping work internally, it just increases our revenue.”

Using Heidelberg’s Prinect workflow, the shop sends color profiles directly from its Agfa computer-to-plate unit to the press. This reduces makeready time and gets the press to acceptable color in less than 100 sheets. Nadrajan says.

The smaller sheet size of the new press is more appropriate for the in-plant, he adds.

“We wanted to downsize the sheet size so our bindery could handle the job more efficiently,” he says.

Speaking of the bindery, the in-plant also added a C.P.Bourg BME booklet maker, which Nadrajan calls “a very, very impressive machine.” It can handle the maximum iGen3 sheet size of 14.33x22.5?, he says, and create landscape-format signature booklets. This is the first installation of a BME of this sheet size, he says.

The shop also recently got into the business of providing OMR scanning of student exams by adding a Scantron scanner. This allowed SFU to stop contracting this service.

“Within the first few months of installation, over 80,000 scans have been done,” Nadrajan says. “This is an excellent revenue source for university in-plants.”

To introduce all of this to the Vancouver-area campus, Document Solutions held an open house in October that drew more than 400 people. The shop created customized invitations on the iGen3 and got vendors to supply food and prizes.

“It was very well received,” Nadrajan testifies.