The machine, which was manufactured by London-based Mailing Technology & Support (MTS), was installed in Howard Hunt’s Dartford premises three weeks ago, having been beta-tested as a prototype since the start of the year. The machine cost around £6,000.
The Pegasus has been attached initially to Howard Hunt’s Buhrs BB700 Pocket envelope inserter but head of operations Danny Cook said it will be using it with a number of its other inserters.
“We were in contact with MTS with other projects and they asked whether we would be happy to allow them to install it on our machine and trial it to see how it held up,” said Cook.
“MTS showed us what it could do and and in the back of our minds we knew we had a job coming up that could be tricky and it gave us the speed we wanted to achieve on it.
“It ran the job perfectly and gives us another option that we didn’t have previously. A lot of customers come to us and say, ‘Can we enclose this?’ and we now have the machine to say ‘Yes we can’, so more flexibility to our customers in saying yes.”
Four models of the machine are available: presentation, continuous-feed, single-shot and batch-count, with Howard Hunt taking the continuous-feed model for applications where an item is fed on-demand.
It runs at a maximum speed in single-shot mode of 20,000 items per hour, taking material weighing up to 80gsm and up to 350mm long. Its feed separator incorporates a high-torque micro-step drive and it has a closed-loop stepper motor for flexibility.
MTS director Gerson Louzado said the product, which is now available for purchase, is competitively priced, of a robust build quality and “incorporates minimal consumable parts”.
“The test proved to be such a success that Howard Hunt made the decision to purchase the feeder and asked to retain the beta-test version until the production version was available,” said Louzado.
Howard Hunt, which has three sites in the UK and employs around 250 people, said in March it is eyeing a third Böwe Systec Fusion Cross inserting system, having taken its first in August 2016 and second in January.
