Hello everyone,
I've been lurking around for a while and finally decided to make a post.
We are a digital print and signage company but to our clients we offer the whole service package so when they start working with us we do everything they might need from this field and even a bit wider than that. For us this is a total no-brainer and has pretty much been our business plan from the get-go. These are usually bigger more established companies for which we handle their signage and printing needs but we also have half a dozen (this increases by 1 or 2 per year) of clients with whom we've been from the get go. We've created their brand name, the visual identity of their products, made signage for their buildings, printed their flags, wrapped their cars, printed their labels, business cards...you get the idea the whole thing.
The majority of this stuff we do in-house. The main reason we do that is because that way we don't depend on other people's definition of quality and deadlines. Say we are running late on delivering something that the customer absolutely needs by tonight. If we can do it in-house I'll gladly spend a few extra hours in myself or if I can't do it by myself ask one of the employees to stick around to finish this for a good client. Via outsourcing that would be impossible.
Offset is not something we initially looked into because I was well aware that a 4C B2 press alone easily costs $100k+ not to mention the rest of the pre and post-press tools one would need. It was only when we started getting frustrated with the quality and unreliability of the companies to which we outsourced our work that we started looking into it.
This year I've been doing a lot of research into it and I think that I have a pretty good idea on how we could get started but as I don't like walking around blind without a cane I thought I'd first ask people that have done it what they think.
Here is what I have so far.
After looking over all the work we send to offset there are only 2 jobs that wouldn't work on a B3 press and they are: a cardboard packaging box, which we don't even do anymore because we don't work with the client anymore and B2 posters. B2 posters can be an easy buck but we don't do them that often and when we do it's usually something like 200-500 so I won't cry about not being able to do these. Also if we have to do a smaller volume we can always print them on our wide formats. We do a lot of B1 posters on them anyway.
Another job that we do every month is 500k ticket prints. You can print 8 of these on B3 so that's 63.000 sheets of paper which have to go 4 times through the machine (on a 1C B3) so that's 250,000 prints. If we assume that the press can do 7500 s/h that's around 30 print hours (not counting setting up the plates, colors etc). So this kind of job probably isn't ideal for a machine like this, right ?
Doing in it in house would be pretty great as it's a regular job but it's also a pretty low margin job and takes a lot of time so maybe something to be avoided on a machine like this.
It's also not very typical. We usually do things like flyers, 4 of them on a B3 sheet for example, let's say 10k of them. So that's 2.500 sheets, 4 times through the machine for full color and 2 sides 20,000 prints. 3 hours of print time so with setup and all around 6-7 hours. That's pretty good in my opinion.
One of the things I've always just assumed to be true is that everyone who does full color prints does them on a 4C press. It just seemed logical because I assumed that you couldn't get proper registration on anything less or that the quality would somehow never be the same.
Well about a year ago we switched to a new litho supplier with whom we have a very good relationship mainly because they are extremely responsive, always deliver on time and have great quality. I was shocked to find out that they do all their prints on a 1C machine. Again I always just assumed, based on the quality we got, that it's a 4C machine so I didn't even give it much thought.
Right now my train of thought is getting a 1C or 2C B3 press and starting from there. My main concern with this is that none of us have done litho before and that we won't be able to get good results. The basis for this concern is that a lot of people from the litho industry have told me that you need a press master with 20 years of experience to get good color results on a 1C or 2C machine.
We do around $100k of offset per year and that increases every year. We outsource all of it and we can maybe shave off 1-2% off this for ourselves. Another thing around here is that offset margins are pretty high.
My main concerns so far are whether we'll be able to hit registration and get a good enough quality in general and how much waste we'll have. I've been hearing different things how long it takes to stabilize the machine to get a good print, I'm assuming that it depends on the condition of the press but if it's something like 200-300 sheets per color that's 800-1200 sheets of waste on a 2.500-3000 sheet job (for example). That's no joke.
Other than the press itself for starters we figure we'll need:
a 1m wide giolutine (so we can cut down B2 and B1 papers to B3)
a die cut press
a folder
a coater (offline probably)
After we're all setup and actually know what we're doing we also want to get a CTP ASAP. I've looked around a bit and I was offered a SDP-ECO 1630II from 2000 which is described as in "top condition" for $6k. I've done up a bit of reading up though and from what I can tell polyester plates aren't really ideal for a machine without autoplate...or have I heard wrong ?
That's about it so far. I'd love to hear what others who have taken the plunge from digital to offset thing and any sort of advice you have.
Thanks in advance everyone!
I've been lurking around for a while and finally decided to make a post.
We are a digital print and signage company but to our clients we offer the whole service package so when they start working with us we do everything they might need from this field and even a bit wider than that. For us this is a total no-brainer and has pretty much been our business plan from the get-go. These are usually bigger more established companies for which we handle their signage and printing needs but we also have half a dozen (this increases by 1 or 2 per year) of clients with whom we've been from the get go. We've created their brand name, the visual identity of their products, made signage for their buildings, printed their flags, wrapped their cars, printed their labels, business cards...you get the idea the whole thing.
The majority of this stuff we do in-house. The main reason we do that is because that way we don't depend on other people's definition of quality and deadlines. Say we are running late on delivering something that the customer absolutely needs by tonight. If we can do it in-house I'll gladly spend a few extra hours in myself or if I can't do it by myself ask one of the employees to stick around to finish this for a good client. Via outsourcing that would be impossible.
Offset is not something we initially looked into because I was well aware that a 4C B2 press alone easily costs $100k+ not to mention the rest of the pre and post-press tools one would need. It was only when we started getting frustrated with the quality and unreliability of the companies to which we outsourced our work that we started looking into it.
This year I've been doing a lot of research into it and I think that I have a pretty good idea on how we could get started but as I don't like walking around blind without a cane I thought I'd first ask people that have done it what they think.
Here is what I have so far.
After looking over all the work we send to offset there are only 2 jobs that wouldn't work on a B3 press and they are: a cardboard packaging box, which we don't even do anymore because we don't work with the client anymore and B2 posters. B2 posters can be an easy buck but we don't do them that often and when we do it's usually something like 200-500 so I won't cry about not being able to do these. Also if we have to do a smaller volume we can always print them on our wide formats. We do a lot of B1 posters on them anyway.
Another job that we do every month is 500k ticket prints. You can print 8 of these on B3 so that's 63.000 sheets of paper which have to go 4 times through the machine (on a 1C B3) so that's 250,000 prints. If we assume that the press can do 7500 s/h that's around 30 print hours (not counting setting up the plates, colors etc). So this kind of job probably isn't ideal for a machine like this, right ?
Doing in it in house would be pretty great as it's a regular job but it's also a pretty low margin job and takes a lot of time so maybe something to be avoided on a machine like this.
It's also not very typical. We usually do things like flyers, 4 of them on a B3 sheet for example, let's say 10k of them. So that's 2.500 sheets, 4 times through the machine for full color and 2 sides 20,000 prints. 3 hours of print time so with setup and all around 6-7 hours. That's pretty good in my opinion.
One of the things I've always just assumed to be true is that everyone who does full color prints does them on a 4C press. It just seemed logical because I assumed that you couldn't get proper registration on anything less or that the quality would somehow never be the same.
Well about a year ago we switched to a new litho supplier with whom we have a very good relationship mainly because they are extremely responsive, always deliver on time and have great quality. I was shocked to find out that they do all their prints on a 1C machine. Again I always just assumed, based on the quality we got, that it's a 4C machine so I didn't even give it much thought.
Right now my train of thought is getting a 1C or 2C B3 press and starting from there. My main concern with this is that none of us have done litho before and that we won't be able to get good results. The basis for this concern is that a lot of people from the litho industry have told me that you need a press master with 20 years of experience to get good color results on a 1C or 2C machine.
We do around $100k of offset per year and that increases every year. We outsource all of it and we can maybe shave off 1-2% off this for ourselves. Another thing around here is that offset margins are pretty high.
My main concerns so far are whether we'll be able to hit registration and get a good enough quality in general and how much waste we'll have. I've been hearing different things how long it takes to stabilize the machine to get a good print, I'm assuming that it depends on the condition of the press but if it's something like 200-300 sheets per color that's 800-1200 sheets of waste on a 2.500-3000 sheet job (for example). That's no joke.
Other than the press itself for starters we figure we'll need:
a 1m wide giolutine (so we can cut down B2 and B1 papers to B3)
a die cut press
a folder
a coater (offline probably)
After we're all setup and actually know what we're doing we also want to get a CTP ASAP. I've looked around a bit and I was offered a SDP-ECO 1630II from 2000 which is described as in "top condition" for $6k. I've done up a bit of reading up though and from what I can tell polyester plates aren't really ideal for a machine without autoplate...or have I heard wrong ?
That's about it so far. I'd love to hear what others who have taken the plunge from digital to offset thing and any sort of advice you have.
Thanks in advance everyone!
