Hamada Printing Press

As early as 1923, The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University recognized the benefit of having an in-house printing facility. However, several years ago, the shop found itself in a financial hole.

FLINT, MI—03/30/09—Mid-State Litho posted a notice on its website regarding the future of Hamada of Japan's operations in the United States. It in part reads: "By now some end users and industry insiders have likely heard the news that Hamada of Japan will be closing their North American branch office, Hamada of America, effective March 31st, 2009. Hamada of Japan will be taking over much of the workload handled by the American branch. . .There is now a safety net for end users. American equipment dealers have pooled their resources and are now networking our entire parts inventory on a national level. This will cut down on lead times for part orders which now come direct from Japan.

For years, Paul Lee played what he called a game of “Frogger” whenever he left his office on the first floor of an education building at Anne Arundel Community College, in Arnold, Md. “Getting from my office to the copy center I had to cross a hall,” says Lee, director of Document Services, “and if I did that between classes…” Frogger ensued—that classic video game where a frog tries to cross a busy street without being squashed. This danger aside, the in-plant’s location was less than ideal for another reason: it was in a different building than the mail center. So if jobs were finished late

THE GIRLS and Boys Town Print Shop recently received a cornucopia of graphic arts delights that would make even the largest commercial printer envious.
The seven-employee in-plant, located just outside of Omaha, took ownership of a two-color Heidelberg Quickmaster 46 press, a two-color Hamada H248CX press, a Mitsubishi DPX2 platesetter, a Xerox DocuColor 8000 and a Xerox 250.

Deliveries from the Visual Communications department at Lake Forest College, in Illinois, are handled in style, thanks to the vintage 1964 golf cart that the department purchased two years ago. “We had nothing but hand trucks to make deliveries,” says Leslie Taylor, director. “We’re trying to have more of a presence on campus. In the hood of the cart is a cooler, so when we deliver in the summer, we offer cold pop or water to whoever’s getting the job.” As part of its outreach program, the Visual Communications department—which is located in a large building that once served as a dog kennel—has

SOMETIMES IT seems I’m chained to this desk, “observing” the industry through e-mails and Web sites. So I like to break away now and then to see for myself what’s happening in the world’s in-plants. Recently I caught a train up to New York to do just that. On a frigid winter day I walked through a sea of scarves and hats to the United Nations’ headquarters to visit one of the largest in-plants out there. Paul Kazarov, chief of the Publishing Section, took me for a walk through the U.N.’s vast underground in-plant, filled with just about every type of printing and binding

IN-PLANT UPGRADES come a lot more easily when your organization’s marketing department is pushing for them. Take the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP), for example. For years the Central Duplicating department had been getting by with aging Itek, Multi and A.B.Dick duplicators, with barely a dime of investment money coming from the school. But as CCP kicked off a new branding and marketing campaign, the benefits of print-on-demand and variable data printing—and the role they could play in the school’s recruitment efforts—became obvious. This realization prompted the college to install a remanufactured Kodak NexPress 2100 with a fifth unit for adding clear gloss or

More coverage of Graph Expo product introductions . IT MAY be telling that the majority of presses in operation around the show floor of Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2006 last month were of the digital variety. Offset units were conspicuous in their absence. Digital presses have become part of the commercial printing mainstream, rather than being a specialty product segment or market niche. To emphasize this, Hewlett-Packard shared results from an InfoTrends study that surveyed a sampling of digital color printing buyers and producers. The research firm found that the percentage of color printing jobs with a run length

OFFSET PRESSES continue to pull their weight amidst the flashy digital printers that have been popping up in offices nationwide. These digital newcomers might be great for short-run work, but for big projects they still must step aside and let ye olde offset workhorses do their thing. Don’t think being called “old” is an insult, though. The longevity of these machines is impressive and can easily add up to decades. Jim VanderWal, production manager at CRC Product Services in Grand Rapids, Mich., says that his shop’s four-color Heidelberg SM102 was purchased in 1989 and the two-color Heidelberg SM72 dates back to 1975. Over

In-plant managers got a chance to see the technologies they've been reading about at the recent Graph Expo show. For the many in-plant managers in attendance, the recent Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2004 show in Chicago was a graphic arts fantasy land. "I felt like a kid in a candy store," observes Mike Renn, of Mellon Corporate Publishing, in Philadelphia. "I went to take a look at the latest direct-to-plate systems and software management packages and came away with numerous options." Attendance this year was pretty healthy, he adds: "I had to wedge myself between bodies to check out the latest gear." Other managers agreed. "I