The company first branched into printing at the beginning of last year when managing director Sean Quigley devised a series of local, detailed walking maps: the Yellow Publications’ Around & About Series.
The company initially used an existing Canon 4080 machine, previously used for internal office materials, but decided a production press was needed.
“We trialed that product to see what would happen and it became obvious it was going to be fairly popular, so we knew we wouldn’t be able to survive on the 4080,” said Quigley.
OMD opted to replace the Canon machine with the C5100S instead of an equivalent Konica Minolta machine after being impressed by its ease of use and the service support on offer.
“The quality and clarity of this machine is fantastic but with a lot of what we are printing quality isn’t paramount. More important is that it’s an extremely simple machine to use,” said Quigley.
“And the thing that really swung it from my point of view is the standard of service. We’d been using the engineers in Cornwall for our Canon machine and they’re unbelievable actually.”
Quigley added: “The demo at Ricoh’s head office was impeccable; that was the difference between them and Konica Minolta.”
ODM is also investing in a new D&K Europa double-sided B2 laminator, to replace an aging Autobond machine.
“The Foliant was a very good machine but the new D&K is pretty fantastic,” said Quigley. “It’s got two chrome rollers so both sides can be laminated to the same quality.”
ODM spent around £90,000 on this and the new Ricoh, and is open to future expansion of its printing activities, said Quigley.
“It’s very early days; to be honest we’re not using the full capabilities of the Ricoh yet. But if it goes well we’d like to expand. The thing with the digital print market is it’s constantly changing, so I’m interested to see what comes out in the next two or three years. I’ll definitely be going to Drupa,” he added.
The 65ppm C5100S was launched in May last year, alongside an 80ppm C5110S. Both were the first Ricoh machines to feature a newly developed toner formulation and enhanced toner transfer technology, designed to deliver high quality print results on heavily textured stock.
