Folding Advice

[CaliPrintGuy]

Hey all! I have an older 2003 model Heidelberg Stahfolder that I’m looking to move on from. We mostly fold letter, half, and French folds on text weight (both uncoated and coated). Occasionally we have a smaller pharmaceutical fold we need to perform. Having the right angle stahl has been nice for the range of folds, however it’s end of life is near and instead of replacing rollers and belts I’d like to invest in a newer more machine operator friendly version that can handle these folds. Any advice or suggestions on what folders to look into, I don’t need anything high end or even new, I would be interested in buying a used machine that is well kept. Green button finishing is a must nowadays, invest in the tech!

Cheers all

 

[SmithFinisher]

It's all a matter of what you need. I have a Heidelberg Stahl from 2008 and it still runs great. I went to Drupa and didn't see anything life changing from what I have now. We have a three station round continous feeder and run alot of different sizes every day. So if you have many different set ups and sizes, the automatic rollers and buckle plates are a huge time saver. I get automatic e-mails all the time for these machines being sold used. It's not uncommon for us to run 4 different jobs that have different fold configurations in 1 hour which is really only possible with the automatic set up. The only issue is that if something breaks, it can be a bit costly if you don't know how to fix those motors. Heidelberg will tell you to replace the automatic adjustment assembly but the only thing that can wear down (over many years) is the encoder which is only $20.

This is just my opinion though. I love our machine, has folded hundreds of millions of products and still runs great.

 

[CaliPrintGuy]

I see. I would love to go the automatic roller and buckle plate setup. Experienced operators are few and far between nowadays. If I can punch numbers into a screen and have it adjust accordingly that is extremely valuable to my operation. I understand that comes with a cost but I know the tech has been out there for sometime now. There has got to be used machines that can perform french, letter, half, Z folds with a automatic setup!

 

[SmithFinisher]

Yep. Those folds are pretty easy. Change overs for those will likely take about 5 minutes. This is a link to a machine that is pretty similar (except the delivery and size format) to my machine. Not saying that you should get that but that's what I use.

https://www.pressxchange.com/en/stahl-th-66-64-automatic-year-2007/machine-id/409414/