advice on small die-cutter

[davarino]

Lorenzo - our market is books, and our runs vary from 50 - 2500. My intent is to offer our publishing clients foil and die cutting as an option for their covers. My feeling is that if I offer one service, they'll soon ask for the other. Hence my search for a "combo" machine. On the very short runs, a tabletop hand-fed machine would work. But once we get into 1000+, well, you know... This machine may very well not exist, but thanks to the web and forums like this one, my chances at success increase!

I would suggest that you visit the GraphExpo. There were several such machines there two years ago when I went, high capital investment and square footage, but the throughput and quality were right on the money and seemed to require relatively small training. (If a salesman can do it... )

Good luck.

 

[Stickman42]

I would suggest that you visit the GraphExpo. There were several such machines there two years ago when I went, high capital investment and square footage, but the throughput and quality were right on the money and seemed to require relatively small training. (If a salesman can do it... )

Good luck.

Thanks davarino. Already intend on being at the show. Will probably have to walk it end to end this time!

 

[Lorenzo lab guy]

UPDATE:
I thought I might update our results from our small rotary die cutter quest that started last year. We bought the Duplo UD M 300 and like it a lot. We are saving 2-3 hours of labor each day and our staff is not bothered when we get a big die-cut order. Once we got the die maker to understand our requirements we have been happy with the quality and speed. One issue we do have is the feed table adjustment seems very delicate. It is very easy to bump the table and have it lose registration. The table has two axis of adjustment that is kind of based on a mechanism that rests on a single pin and that seems pretty under-engineered to us - any Duplo experts out there, I would love to hear your opinion on that. We have two other Duplo machines that seem uniformly well engineered.
The other complaint is that is the manual delivery tray is pretty useless - the installation guy pretty much summed it up "well that's a piece of junk." Backup and Jam City. We made a plastic chute to deliver to a box and that works fine. We could add the stripper and delivery conveyor but we are very constrained on space. I expect most users use the conveyor so having a bad manual tray is understandable. It is interesting to me that heavier toner sometimes fails to slide in the chute as well as pieces with minimal toner. A difference in static charge I am thinking.
Don't get me wrong with the complaints - they are minor. This machine has become well regarded by out team at this point.