operator with Rolapress
With the purchase of a Kasfold Sprint booklet maker and a Rolapress sheet and book flattener, Tompkin Press, has brought all its bookletmaking in-house.
The company, a small commercial litho and digital printer in Nottingham, has a wide range of clients in the Midlands and was outsourcing more and more of its booklet finishing. ‘Our market for short run booklets grew significantly after we installed a Kodak NexPress and offered booklets with variable print,’ explained Richard Tompkin, managing director. ‘We hand finished some very short runs in-house but we wanted more control of the jobs that we outsourced. Turn round times were between 24 to 48 hours but by investing in our own booklet maker we could print and finish very urgent booklets in a day.’
‘Our requirements were very straight forward. We wanted a very simple machine that could staple, fold and trim sheets printed on the Kodak Nexpress. We didn’t need and we didn’t want to pay for all the bells and whistles that were available on some other bookletmakers. Our belief was that the less electronics it had, the less likely it was to go wrong.’ Mr Tompkin stated, ‘This is why the Kasfold Sprint fits our needs so well. It combines the benefits of a very well built machine at an affordable price with ease of use, so that all our staff can use it with minimal training.’
The Kasfold Sprint has been designed to finish digital print, whilst remaining 100% litho friendly. It produces A4, A6 and A5 finished sized booklets at up to 1500 per hour. Each collated set is fed into the bookletmaker by hand and then the machine takes over and the set is jogged from both sides, centre stapled, folded and front edge trimmed in one process.
‘We’ve only had it for a month but it has hit the ground running. It’s always good to have work ready and waiting for a new machine,’ Mr Tompkin continued. ‘We’ve been impressed with the results that it has achieved and expect it to pay for itself within a year, if not six months.’
While Richard was seeing the Kasfold being demonstrated at Ashgate’s showroom in Chalgrove, he was shown the brand new Rolapress sheet and book flattener. Ashgate designed the Rolapress and had it made for them in response to a demand for a more professional finish on booklets and on their Fastbind Fotomount photobooks.
‘It’s a fantastic small piece of kit, once again very simple but it gives that professional sharp fold even on the heaviest of booklets,’ said Mr Tompkin. ‘One or two passes through the Rolapress transforms the quality of the fold in seconds.’ Thinner booklets can be processed 5-10 booklets at a time and thicker books benefit from being flattened individually.
