Time to buy a Diecutter, but which one?

[longlimb]

Sorry to be one of those guys asking such general questions, but our shop has decided to purchase a diecutter and I am in the dark as to what we should be looking for. I have had some advise from a equipment sales person but I thought I would reach out to you all and ask, what makes a good diecutter?

We can't afford a brand new one. Maybe a 90's model or newer.

Our largest press can only run 20" x 28" so we don't need a 40" diecutter.

What are the advantages/disadvantages for a cylinder diecutter? And same question about a flat bed diecutter like a Bobst?

Any advise you all can give me would be much appreciated. We have had no luck with finishing houses in our area so we are ready to do it outselves!

 

[Cornishpastythighs]

If we were in the market for another die cutter we would stick with Bobst. They are without a doubt the experts at manufacturing die cutters. We have added a hot foil unit and we do some amazing packaging special effects.
I have only used rotary die cutters on web fed presses.
Bobst does great embossing and is very reliable as long as you have a rigid maintenance program in place.
Getting a 15 year old die cutter is of course 'buyer beware'. Make sure you take along someone who knows their stuff and only buy one that is running not one that is in pieces and has already been de commissioned.
You will need a die pre makeready department where you can prepare dies for the press and make repairs to the die if needed.
If you can snag a 40" model in good condition for the right price why not get it, who's to say that your next press wont be a 40"
Good luck

 

[dabob]

Depends on your budget . . . if you can afford a Bobst thats great . . . but we have an Original Heidelberg Cylinder 30 inch it doesn't emboss, doesn't foil . . . but die cuts darn nearly anything all day long . . there is a company that makes die cutting jackets for the blanket cylinders too I just can't remember the name but it looked interesting since you could run it on your offset machines . . .

 

[longlimb]

Thanks for the advise guys. Yeah I guess it couldn't hurt to get a 40". Too large is better than too small. dabob, so a cylinder machine can't do embossing? Or just the model you have? I thought the cylinder diecutter can do embossing as well??

 

[Kees]

Hi, we have about 10 Heidelberg Windmill presses in our plant, not for printing but for die-cutting, embossing, scoring and hot-stamping up to A3 size. Works fine.

 

[dabob]

No Title

A word of warning on the platen presses . . . they are more versatile as far as being able to foil, emboss, score, and die cut but you are severely limited by the amount of die inches you can cut at once - you have to remember that you are hitting all of the die at once so if you have a very involved die lots of cutting/creasing rules you might have as much as 200 inches of rule all hitting at the same time where on a cylinder you are only hitting the rules that the cylinder hits as its going across. On our cylinder press converting it to foil/emboss would be quite an expensive endeavor so we have a Kluge that we do our foiling/embossing on.

In the past we only had a Kluge 12x18 that we used for die cutting and when running bottle hangers we actually shattered one of the platen adjustment bolts from the repeated impacts - had to have one custom machined since Kluge won't sell parts for a press that old. Went to the cylinder and never looked back . . . see images about die rule inches attached

So depending on what your demands are there are several solutions . . . if you just need to emboss/foil Letterheads, Envelopes, Bus. Cards and some die cutting platens will work great. for larger die cutting like Presentation Folders and multi up die cutting forms you would be better off with a cylinder press, but if money or space isn't an issue go for the boost and a platen for the small stuff.

 

[longlimb]

Interesting. Thanks for the detailed reply dabob. So you say it would be expensive to make your cylinder press do embossing. Is that because of the time to setup for something other than diecutting? Or are there additional parts you need in order to do embossing on a cylinder press? I'm learning a lot here. Really appreciate the help guys.

 

[dabob]

Interesting. Thanks for the detailed reply dabob. So you say it would be expensive to make your cylinder press do embossing. Is that because of the time to setup for something other than diecutting? Or are there additional parts you need in order to do embossing on a cylinder press? I'm learning a lot here. Really appreciate the help guys.

Makeready time would be longer for sure and finding flexible counters we haven't looked into - how big a sheet are you planning to emboss????? Not knowing your needs makes it hard to make a valid recommendation . . . how big a shop are you - how big a budget do you have for this department?

here is a link to a pretty good article about it

http://www.fsea.com/article.asp?ID=119#.Vj0pec4Y3a4

If its just die cutting heres something that will turn your offset press into a die cutter also . . .

http://www.hsboyd.com/dies/

 

[longlimb]

Thanks for the articles dabob. And sorry for the vagueness of my needs. But I am truly starting from scratch here and not exactly sure what I should be looking for. We are a medium size shop. The largest press is 28". We do a ton of pocket folders but send them out to finishers out of town. I would say we average 2-3 PFs a week. Probably only 2-3 embosses a month though. And even less on foil. So not looking to find a piece of equipment to do foil stamping. Really our focus is diecutting with hopefully embossing.

The embossing we do is usually not a large area. Typically a logo on the front of a PF or the header of LH. So from the article, a cylinder press would be ideal with keeping the embossing area parallel to the gripper. Noting a flat bed would be ideal but not necessarily needed.

I guess with my prepress background I just have a hard time understanding the procedures/tasks of doing either diecutting or embossing on a cylinder press. MR times from switching from diecutting to embossing, etc.

Budget? Well that's always the million dollar question, right? We more like thousand dollar question for us. I would say $20K. Is that number ridiculous for a decent cylinder diecutter press?

I guess I should ask another question, where do I find one? Does anyone have used press companies they recommend? I've found a couple places but supply seems stark. I really like dixie reproductions but just worried about him finding me what I need.

 

[dabob]

Thanks for the articles dabob. And sorry for the vagueness of my needs. But I am truly starting from scratch here and not exactly sure what I should be looking for. We are a medium size shop. The largest press is 28". We do a ton of pocket folders but send them out to finishers out of town. I would say we average 2-3 PFs a week. Probably only 2-3 embosses a month though. And even less on foil. So not looking to find a piece of equipment to do foil stamping. Really our focus is diecutting with hopefully embossing.

The embossing we do is usually not a large area. Typically a logo on the front of a PF or the header of LH. So from the article, a cylinder press would be ideal with keeping the embossing area parallel to the gripper. Noting a flat bed would be ideal but not necessarily needed.

I guess with my prepress background I just have a hard time understanding the procedures/tasks of doing either diecutting or embossing on a cylinder press. MR times from switching from diecutting to embossing, etc.

Budget? Well that's always the million dollar question, right? We more like thousand dollar question for us. I would say $20K. Is that number ridiculous for a decent cylinder diecutter press?

I guess I should ask another question, where do I find one? Does anyone have used press companies they recommend? I've found a couple places but supply seems stark. I really like dixie reproductions but just worried about him finding me what I need.

Ok lets take them in order 1st you don't need a press bigger than a 30" since your largest press is a 28. How long a run is your average PF? As to your experience . . . . I would highly recommend you find a person who has experience running diecutters/letterpress type of equipment - its a whole new world of printing than offset or digital. You would also need to find someone to make your steel rule dies for you. They might have an idea who might help you get started.

Budget .. . . as I recall our 30" was about $35,000 installed . . but that was several years ago and we are just outside San Francisco - you haven't said where you are so I can't hazzard a guess on what dealers you might have locally. You would also want to find a source for your embossing dies and they might be more help for information regarding embossing on a cylinder. Also if the most common product for this is P folders how are you going to glue them . . . it can be done by hand but that is really slow you might want to look at a folder/gluer to take this on.

So from here . . . your budget is on the low side . . you might get an old Mehile for that price but I don't know how much impressional strength a vertical Mehile has or how it would handle complex die shapes in the delivery. You are going to have to do some homework with someone experience in the art of diecuting before you leap off into the deep end. Good Luck . . . .

 

[longlimb]

I'm in the Southeast so I have a feeling we might be close to what you paid when regional inflation is accounted for. Was your diecutter new for $35K?

Agreed on the folder/gluer. Been looking into these. Looked into a Marathon machine. Found a couple of those actually.

Average run on a PF for us probably 4-5K. Not large runs really. And I was originally thinking of having our hand workers hand glue for a while to see how fast/slow it went until we decided on a piece of equipment for that. Is that foolish?

Again, thanks dabob for the help here. I have bounced ideas off a few equipment salesmen but I just wanted to hear from my fellow guys in the trenches. Wanted to make sure I wasn't getting smoke blown up the you know what so they can sell me whatever it is they have available.

 

[dabob]

New . . . ha ha . . no I think they stopped making those in the 1960's anything Heidelberg makes today looks like a Bobst and I am sure it costs like a Bobst . .. or more . .. These cylinders are converted letterpresses . .. most of them have had the inker removed and converted to die cutting exclusively - have a good press mechanic check it out but these things are pretty much bullet proof if the maintenance has been done and has been run by somebody who knows how to run them . . . . have fun learning about old technology

 

[aqazi81]

As your average run length is around 4-5K, you can start with a hand fed die cutter, those are slow but an experienced operator can die cut around 12-16K's a day.

 

[dabob]

As your average run length is around 4-5K, you can start with a hand fed die cutter, those are slow but an experienced operator can die cut around 12-16K's a day.

I guess you could .. . but a 30 inch flatbed . .. whoa thats a bigggg machine . . . . I'd bite the bullet and get an old cylinder . . . once they are set up they almost run themselves . . . and they are way more dangerous!!!!

 

[aqazi81]

We had 10 handfed die cutters of 42" and they worked fine.

 

[dabob]

We had 10 handfed die cutters of 42" and they worked fine.

I didn't say they didn't work . . but this is a guy from the prepress/digital side of the world . . . I kinda doubt that he has ever seen a die cutter let alone set one up . . . I started out in printing by hand feeding a platen press . . . it was a different world back then . . .and you say you "had" 10 of them . . you don't any more??? Why not? I've had 3 Linotypes . . . doesn't mean I would recommend them for typesetting today.

 

[longlimb]

I think a cylinder press is our best bet. We are willing to pay a little more to get a faster more efficient press. But dabob, you do make me nervous now about having one of our pressmen take over this "new" machine. I assumed it would be similar enough to running a printing press that they could figure it out. No?

 

[dabob]

A cylinder press is very similar to one of your current models - depending on the model you get it could be a single sheet feeder or a stream feeder we have had both variations in our shop with the Heidelberg its a single sheet at a time and as far as die cutting it shouldn't be too big a learning curve. Our lead pressman learned quickly and now he sets it up and our bindery guy watches/runs it now. . . .Embossing on a cylinder I never considered, since we have a Kluge that foils and embosses and a good friend who takes care of our P folder work for us. It was the 42 inch hand fed presses that worried me . . . but see if anybody in your area has something like that and go take a look at it running . . . your about to spend the best part of 40 grand . . . spend a thousand of it doing research . . . You can get a ticket for a couple of hundred bucks from Florida to San Francisco spend a day watching and asking questions and you would only be out 3 or 4 hundred bucks (or spend a week its a great vacation/write off) . . . PM me if your interested but I would bet the guy thats doing your work now would give you a shop tour unless losing your work is really going to hurt him

 

[longlimb]

Man that would be awesome to fly out to SAN FRAN. That's very kind of you to offer to help dabob. We've used a couple places in our area (Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Orlando) so most likely the boss lady won't let me fly cross country, but it can't hurt to ask!