Taking delivery of a brand-new Duplo DuSense DDC-8000 B2 spot UV coater and cold foiler, as well as a B2 conversion kit for its DC-746 slitter-cutter-creaser in February, Flexpress has significantly improved production speeds for embellished work.
The DDC-8000, bought with part exchange for Flexpress’ 2017 DuSense model, has allowed the firm to print embellishments directly onto B2 sheets from its HP Indigo 100K digital press.
“We were having to trim everything down to B3 for the old DuSense, and of course the new model is much faster – foiling was a separate operation, whereas now it is done inline,” Steve Wenlock, Flexpress managing director, told Printweek.
“There were a lot of advantages to upgrading,” he added.
The conversion of the company’s DC-746 to a DC-20K – by adding a new feeder – was likewise part of the rationalisation.
“Anybody that does raised spot UV or foil will tell you that once you have a pile of sheets that have all have little raised areas, the sheets don’t sit at all flat under the guillotine,” Wenlock said.
“So the best way to trim them is through the business card cutter – the 746 originally – but then the 746 wouldn’t take B2 sheets. So we thought it made sense to put the B2 sheet feeder on it, then!
“So now we can print B2, we can embellish B2, and we can trim B2, with fewer touchpoints. Plus, we can now actually print business cards 64-up as opposed to 42-up, which we were originally doing. There’s less waste, and it’s a more cost-effective way of doing them,” he said, adding that Flexpress had been able to pass on that saving to customers without themselves losing out.
Business cards are a growing area for the trade printer. Each year, it prints around 20-30% more than it did the previous year, according to Wenlock.
“It’s definitely a growing market for us, and that’s why we thought it was worth investing and pushing a little bit harder.”
Flexpress also prints on an SRA1 Ryobi 924 LED UV litho press, and has a smaller Ricoh digital device as backup for the Indigo.
With two months of the Duplos in-house, Wenlock said he was very pleased with progress.
“The quality and effects that we’re getting off [the DDC-8000] are considerably better, and it’s constantly in operation.
“It’s certainly not reached its peak yet, but what I can tell you is that we’re already doing more than three times what we were doing on the old machine. Where we would have sent out some of our longer run spot UV work previously, we’re now keeping that in-house: so the machine is doing considerably more sheets than it previously was.”
Flexpress employs 25 at its Leicester site, and expects to turn over around £3.6m this year.
