Hickling & Squires has completed an upgrade to its digital finishing operations which has included bringing large format printing in-house for the first time.
The Nottingham printer had been among the first in the UK to install a Xerox Iridesse in 2018, but has moved away to Konica Minolta for its latest investments. Since the end of last summer the company has taken delivery of an AcurioPress 6120 high speed mono machine, the AccuroPress C7090 light production press and the flagship AccurioPress C12000 which includes the IQ501 intelligent quality care unit.
The company has followed this with a second Duplo DBM350 booklet maker, Acuity Prime 30 flatbed printer and matched Jwei Titanium cutting table.
“We decided to move away from Xerox,” says production director Jamie Gilbert, “in order to get the service we want. Konica Minolta is just 20 minutes from us and many of their engineers are local. For us it’s all about service.”
Not entirely. The C7090 delivers backed sheets up to 900mm long which suits some of the booklet formats that are becoming popular. The second DBM350 was needed he says to cope with the capacity coming through.
Adapting to the new machines was not a challenge as both providers are using Fiery Rips and Hickling & Squires’s operators know the operating system they will be using. “It means we could be up and running within a day,” he says.
The IQ501 intelligent quality care unit is a scanning device which measures every sheet and corrects for registration and for any sheet to sheet colour variation as well as maintaining fidelity to the pass sheet. It means, says Gilbert, that print quality is better than the Iridesse.
In the end, it comes down to avoiding breakdowns and receiving a fast response when it becomes necessary. The reliability of the Konica Minolta machines is a step up and proximity of support has meant than when engineers need to call, it is only a matter of hours, not days or longer. “This avoids the bottlenecks that can happen because of breakdowns,” he says.
The company’s digital line up is supported by three B2 Speedmasters, a CD74-8 and both eight- and ten-colour XL75s.
