CHICAGO, IL -- Brian Petersen is determined his second stint at Arlington Press will be better than his first. He started his printing career almost 15 years ago at the shop, left and returned 18 months ago, this time as the owner. Many decisions later, one that Petersen is happy he made has resulted in his shop being the first to install the brand new A.B.Dick QP25II two-color offset press. "We do a lot of short-run, two-color work and no one else seemed to have anything new like the QP25II," said Petersen. "A.B.Dick is a name I'm very familiar with. This shop had an A.B.Dick 360 one-color offset press that was probably 35 years old. It was still running well when we retired it after putting in the QP25II." Arlington Press is a typical, small format print shop with some key advantages. Located in Arlington Heights, IL, a populous, 100,000+ suburb of Chicago, it is a storefront shop in a strip mall situated near an extremely busy intersection. With a thriving business community nearby, Petersen and his three employees stay active six days a week to keep up with demand. He chose the QP25II for several reasons, all of which are working out well. "Most of our jobs are 500 sheets or less so set-up time is absolutely critical to us. Time management is a priority given the number of jobs we do everyday," said Petersen, who first cut his teeth on two-color printing at Arlington before running a digital color press at a larger, four-color shop. "We have minimized set-up time with the QP25II. It's not taking me any more than 15 minutes between jobs, and the wash-ups are so fast." For productivity and cost-effectiveness, the A.B.Dick QP25II is hard to beat. Out-standing features put it on another level for high quality, performance and fast turnaround. "I like the Constant Contact Register System because you can push the sheet either way," said Petersen, referring to the feature which gives operators full control over image position. Combining the advantages of direct feed with a tight register system, the QP25II also includes a newly designed second color head. "The T-head is impressive. It gives you greater press functionality than a duplicator." Petersen's amount of two-color work is diverse, ranging from brochures and labels to letterhead and business cards for a major homebuilder, several automobile dealerships, and service industries. "Most of the work is 8- 1/2 by 11-inch format and includes screens and halftones. They turn out very clean and with high quality," said Petersen of the QP25II, which can handle screens and halftones of images up to 12 1/2 by 17.3 inches. Besides the ink clean-up attachment that allows him to perform ink roller color washes in 90 seconds, Petersen indicated a Varn Kompac continuous dampener with an auto recovery moisture system is doing well. So is the quick-set dual feeder system, which expands and contracts to eliminate the use of different size pile boards. "We can grab and turn a job in seconds. It makes us more productive and competitive because we get the job done quicker," said Petersen.