Introduce yourself!

Kia ora,

My name is Graeme, I'm from New Zealand and I work for Wakefields Digital. I'm a digital operator, I do a bit of prepress and I handle all variable data jobs. I've been reading the forums for the past couple of years but I thought I'd finally introduce myself. I'm 26, been in the industry for only 2 years but I'm enjoying it so far! I'm qualified in graphic design but I have more of a technical mindset, hence my interest in prepress and variable data.

My background before printing was in event production, sound engineering and television but in looking for better work conditions, hours and pay I've somehow wound up here.

We have 3 colour machines (Konica C8000, soon-to-be-replaced Konica C6500, Ricoh C901) and one black and white (Oce 6250). We also have 3 wide format Epsons and one CTP. We also have a decent bindery, covering wiro, saddle stapling, perfect binding, PUR binding and hand case binding.

Our typical volume is between 12,000-50,000 sheets per week, but we've been upwards of 80,000 during busy periods.

Being based in NZ's capital Wellington, most of our clients are government. Most of my questions I'll have will be related to prepress or variable data!

Good to meet you,

G
 
I am karen. I deal with large format printer parts, and i always experienced printing problems of the printer like roland, mutoh, mimaki ect. i hope i can get any professional advice or any help from this board and learn some issue.
 
Used machinery dealer

Used machinery dealer

We are a dealer of Used printing machinery in South part of INDIA. We buy and stock machinery in India.

We are specialist in KOMORI & HEIDELBERG, we have installed Komori's in every part of the India.

We keep machines in Stock, We deal with Heidelberg, Komori, Mitsubishi, Ryobi, KBA, Etc.
We also deal with Cutting machines(Polar, Wohlenberg, Itoh, etc , punching machines (bobst, Ibrica, Heidelberg Etc, and Folding machines (Stahl, Shoei Star, Guk, Bobst etc).

Surendra
[email protected]
 
Hi,

I am Dennis from the Chicago area.

I worked on the presses for 16 years. Mostly on perfecting offset interchangeable sized presses that also had inline bindery, scratch off, folding, gluing, sheeting and roll to roll.
I am now the Estimating and Systems Manager where I have worked for the last 14 years at a Litho/Digital Plastic sheet printer mainly in the POP industry.
 
Last edited:
Hi my name is Ronny i'm new to the printing world kind of jump in head first looking to learn as much as I can from as many people that I can. I work on Agfa m2500 if anybody has some tips and tricks feel free to share
 
Hi, been a member for a while thought it was time to introduce myself. I started in this industry 42 years ago, started working on a 60" letterpress web, didn't thikn i would finish the week...worked on 1-2-4-6 col sheet feds and a heatset web offset. To say I've seen this industry change is a no- brainer, but I fell in love with printing, sadly have become one of those guys that bleeds ink. Now I've become the guy that helps everyone with problems, like helping the young guys learn anything I can teach them, allways willing to help just ask.
 
Hey! Mal Ross here. Owner of signsonline on the Goldcoast Australia. Just bought a L2600 wide fomat HP printer...love it No poison ecosol ink that I used in my Mimaki
I work from home (last 17yrs) also have a Gerber Edge which I only use for white ink backed stickers
Business is good
cheers
M
 
Hello, I am Marlena a fabric printer and scarf designer.

Hello, I am Marlena a fabric printer and scarf designer.

Hello, I am Marlena, a scarf designer and printer. I work with my husband artist Robbie Burger in our business, Designer Scarves by Marlena.
We reproduce art and photos on silk scarves and wraps out of our small studio in the Orlando, FL area.

Been in the wide format printing business for 16 years. Been in the fabric printing business for 7 years.
We service our own Epson wide format printers. Just started using state of the art dye based inks that exceed the printers traditional color gamut. The inks are called NEON brand inks out of NJ.

Thank you all, good to be part of a wide format printing forum.
 
Greetings, John from Johanessburg, South Africa - 40 Year old Copy Shop that started selling technical drafting equipment and doing plan copies and evolved into a copy shop and now evolving into a digital production shop - Typical "Copy Shop" stuff - Mimaki Print/Cut CJV3-130, 2 x OCE Plotters/Copiers/Scanner, Cannon Large Format Inkjet, Xerox DC260, KM grey, and KM Colour (Silly little "Incase machines").

Ive only been in business for fifteen years - and I'm much more involved in graphic design - but knowing how a printer works, how offset works etc goes such a long way in making our graphic design a cut above the rest!!

Love this site - been reading it for years - joined a few months ago - introducing myself today.

Love the comic strips. I really never stopped to think that we all pretty much in the same boat and experience the same stuff - some of those comic strips are so close to real life it's spooky!
 
Love the comic strips. I really never stopped to think that we all pretty much in the same boat and experience the same stuff - some of those comic strips are so close to real life it's spooky!

Thanks! (are they still funny if they're true? LOL)
 
Hello, I'm Doug from Seattle.

I own a printing supply company, NPS Northwest Printers Supply, that was started in 1973 by my parents, who sadly are no longer with us. I started in the industry as a feeder back in 83' moved to camera, separations, proofing (remember Chromalin powder ?) stripping. Trained as a tech for various things and installed and fixed equipment for NPS for the family wage (slave wages). Went into sales at NPS and still fixed equipment and fixed the stuff our competition sold !

In 1997 my wife and I had our first kid (a son) then later that year the parents retired, I bought NPS and sold our first home and bought our second all in 1 week ! This year, 2014 I turned 50 and realized I have spent 30 years in the industry and 1/2 of my life at NPS ! We have 2 kids, a girl and boy who are great along with a very supportive wife of 20 years.

Hobbies are playing electric guitar ( stuck in the 80's hair band days and other rock stuff), finding things to do with the teenage kids that we both like to do and spending time with the wife seeking out fun things to do or watch on Netflix ( currently watching "House" and Korean young adult drama's of all things" - my wife and daughter started it - really). I think I need to do more things.

Thanks for all of the responses, haven't read them all but It's nice to know where some of you have come from and what you have done.

Long Live the Print Industry !!!
 
Welcome Doug!!!
You and I have a lot in common. I have worked in all areas of printing and spent a few years in newspaper. I am about 11 years ahead of you in age and one child. I have three daughters and 6 grandchildren 18,17,15,13 and 2 that are 3. (I guess I have grandchildren close to the age of your children.)
My wife and are getting to the point of enjoying and empty nest.
I spent most of my career in the darkroom and strip-up table, but did enjoy the years I spent in advertising sales. Now I build templates and run a Ctp system.

Welcome! Looking forward to tapping into the knowledge you have!

Blessings!
JimBob
 
Hi I am Victor from Mexico. We are located between the border of US and Mexico on gulf coast.

I own a small print shop and I a do a little of everything. Large Format, Flexo labels, Offset, subliamtion, Laser engraver, Screen Printing, Digital on Xerox. We try to sell everything to our customers :p

I start to read the forum yesterday and I love it. To much information that I really do not know because we do a lot of stuff we are not specialiced on an area. Thanks to everyone how share the knowledge.


Victor.
 
Although I've been a member of PrintPlanet since it began (1996 if memory serves) I've never introduced myself. So, to correct that oversight here goes (sorry for being long-winded but I'm an old fart LOL).

My print career began in the 1960s with my Mum bringing home naughty photos from the printshop where she worked as bindery foreman. My job was to hide the naughty bits by painting over the photos which then would be reproduced. She also brought home "job work" (e.g. manually numbering invoices and collating multi-page documents). A great way to enhance my allowance. During the summer I worked in the small print shop as an odd-job man, coating plates, stripping film, burning the plates etc).

Fast forward, got my Fine Arts Masters degree and taught illustration, photography and graphic design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts school of Art and Design. At the time I also did freelance editorial photography and illustration for ad agencies and magazines (e.g. Reader's Digest, Montreal Scene, Chatelaine, McDonalds etc) This was the late 60s and early 70s. It was also when I started to experiment with analog FM screening.

The Québec Separatist movement killed the school and my interest in staying in Montréal so in 1976 we upped sticks and moved to Calgary where I worked for a prepress shop doing all the photography for the Bay's newspaper ads as well as shooting the film for the newspaper printing presses.

Yikes it was cold, so upped sticks again and off to Vancouver where I got a job as art and studio director at Maccan Erickson advertising. I launched IKEA in Canada, did ads for Honda and eventually stress burned out.

Then in 1982 I worked as in-house Creative Director at Price Printing. I established the company as an award-winning key marketing services provider for businesses where a traditional advertising/design firm's services were not an appropriate fit. I managed a staff of two other graphic designers and was responsible for account support, design creative, art and photography as well as presswork quality control. I learned a lot from the prepress and press folks. The unique combination of value-added creative services and quality presswork made Price Printing a competitive powerhouse and as a result, the subject of a buy-out and consolidation by Quebecor World.
Poof!

Then I partnered as Technical Director/Marketing to take a small 5 person copy/print company to "the next level." Under my prepress technical guidance the company grew from 5 people to a staff of 30 and became the largest PostScript-based service bureau in western Canada. The company set the benchmark for quality desktop publishing output and serviced such companies as VanCity Savings, Richmond Savings, BC Tel, Rodgers Communications, and most of the top advertising agencies in Vancouver. In 1995 I told them the business might last another year but that this new thing called CtP would kill the business unless they changed their business model. They disagreed and sent me packing. They lasted another 14 months before going out of business.

I was immediately hired on a one year contract to assist Hemlock Printers (western Canada's largest commercial sheetfed print shop) to transition from a proprietary Scitex prepress and film-based production workflow to an open platform PostScript and Computer-to-Plate workflow. During my tenure I also stood in for a portion of my time as acting Manufacturing Manager.

That's when I joined the PrintPlanet forums and discovered Creo (and they discovered me).

In 1997 Creo hired me as the Print Quality Technical Marketing Manager to help printers understand the new technology and leverage its potential. I also helped the engineers understand what printers needed. I worked directly with Creo's product, management, and engineering teams to develop knowledge, technology, tools and processes to help enable Creo to grow from a small, single product, company to the leading developer and vendor of graphic communication industry technologies and systems. I was on the development team for products such as Staccato, Maxtone, CX and Fusion screening, Prinergy, and Colorflow. For eleven years at Creo/Kodak. Presented at print technical conferences, trained printers and buyers regarding print quality issues in Europe, N. America, and S.E. Asia. Articles published in trade journals, co-authored TAGA paper on halftone screening, authored BRIDG's guide to halftone screening.

I was in heaven.

I founded the go-to-market initiative - "Value In Print" that generated over $20 million in annual business, validated premium pricing and allowed for greater profit margins on sales of Creo's CtP devices. The ViP initiative played a crucial role in making the Creo brand the high quality benchmark in the printing industry.

But Kodak bought Creo in 2005 - it was a difficult time for me (and many others). Thankfully Kodak transferred the engineering functions of the teams that I worked with to Shanghai and as a result I was vaporized into retirement in 2008.

But I still stay in touch with the industry through things like the RE:print cartoons, posting on this forum, and the occasional consulting job (just finished converting our local newspaper the Victoria Times Colonist to FM screening).

That's about it.
 
A quick update on myself, I left Heidelberg USA after 17+ years to work locally in Boulder. I now work for Ricoh USA in conjunction with Digital Continuous as Advanced Technical Support. I reached a point where it was time to focus on my family. 110% travel just isn't what it used to be...
 
Hello, I'm Stan, I'm a printer at Printastic, complete newb. We do digital sheet fed, a little of wide format and fine arts. Nice to be here.
 

PressWise

A 30-day Fix for Managed Chaos

As any print professional knows, printing can be managed chaos. Software that solves multiple problems and provides measurable and monetizable value has a direct impact on the bottom-line.

“We reduced order entry costs by about 40%.” Significant savings in a shop that turns about 500 jobs a month.


Learn how…….

   
Back
Top