Acorn Press
Lancaster (Pennsylvania) USA.
Online Preset, Heidelberg sheetfed.
InkZone Card has been a time-saver at Acorn Press where three Heidelberg Speedmasters are now up to production speed much quicker.
Acorn Press is a mid-sized commercial printer who is striking a profitable balance between servicing their local customers well and investing in new technologies to drive efficiency. Their 100-employee facility in Central Pennsylvania was started in 1956, and today has revenues exceeding $10 million based on their full service capabilities including prepress, digital and offset printing, die cutting, bindery capabilities, mailing and fulfillment.
The workhorses at Acorn Press are their two 6-color Heidelberg SM102 presses. Despite their age, these solid machines are well maintained to deliver quality color results, and recently have been upgraded to deliver increased efficiencies that rival the capabilities of the latest press technology thanks to new InkZone Card systems from JSA.
In reviewing the technology landscape, the management team didn’t want to take-on the burden of entirely new presses in order to leverage the latest press features like ink-key presetting. Their recent investments focused on expanding prepress capabilities with a Creo CTP installation and the addition of Indigo digital printing capability, so further investment in new sheetfed equipment would have been a stretch. Instead, Acorn Press contacted JSA about the InkZone Card, a unique system that leverages their existing prepress investments in CTP to significantly reduce on-press makeready time on their legacy sheetfed printing equipment.
The performance of JSA InkZone on the 40 inch presses, and the low incremental cost of adding another press, easily justified Acorn Press to add their SM74 6-color into the digital ink preset workflow. Management is now evaluating the addition of JSA Closed Loop Color Control Software using an X-Rite Scanning Densitometer.
Scott Reighard, President Acorn Press admits that the amount of makeready waste depends on the prior print run, but like the seasoned presses at many commercial print shops, those at Acorn now boast makeready times that are up to 25% more efficient, saving thousands in monthly time and materials. Operators are not only getting to color faster on each run, there is also increased consistency between presses and crews, making the entire pressroom more efficient.
Acorn has taken advantage of existing CTP invest-ment with InkZone Card; it simply plugs in to the job-card reader of their Speedmaster consoles.
