Expert Opinion Needed on New Printer for Neophyte

I think you'll want the playbills done on an offset press. It's more efficient for your run lengths and the printing is more everlasting. I still have all of my playbills from the plays I had seen on broadway and they're all as nice as the day I got them. They're also a very nice keepsake.

You'll want something that does full bleed. I'm just thinking of potential advertisers for the playbills. You don't want to have to tell them to redesign their full bleed ads and risk losing the advertising dollars.

You really have to consider the finishing equipment. If you go toner device then you'll want air feed booklet finishers/trimmers. You may need a guillatine. The finishing equipment in good used condition can run upwards of $25k or more depending on what you get.

As far as moisture, most places with air conditioning and heating are generally fine as this takes out moisture but if you're in Texas I'd imagine things are dry their so you may need some humidifiers. Actually one of the big commercial printing giants in my area RR Donnely...has sprinklers on the ceilings that spray mist onto the paper (they only use giant rolls of paper on their equipment).

I think a digital toner device is not your way to go and a press and finishing equipment is going to be overkill. The concept behind big asset purchases for printing companies is you want to keep them running. You'll find that you'll have more jobs you can send to it most likely but you'll have periods where the equipment just sits there.

My general rule of thumb for equipment in a production environment is that if you don't have enough work to keep it running for about an 8 hour shift each day m-f...then it might not be time to go that route yet...
 

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