Stevens Point, Wisconsin — The first ROLAND 500 perfector in North America is destined for Worzalla, one of the nation’s leading book manufacturers. The company will be printing and coating four-color book covers and jackets on the inaugural 29-inch press in its 300,000 sq ft facility. But executives at Worzalla are less concerned about being the first as they are about being fast. “We didn’t choose the ROLAND 500 perfector so we could be the first to have this new press,” says Chuck Nason, Worzalla’s President & CEO. “We chose it because we needed an outstanding press that could print covers and jackets to support our book manufacturing operations” The ROLAND 500 was introduced at Drupa 2000 and made its North American debut at Graph Expo 2002 as a straight printing press, designed to build more versatility into a printer’s pressroom. In its basic configuration, the ROLAND 500 can handle a wide variety of substrates, from thin labeling film to 40 pt. corrugated packaging. Plus, its six-up format, CIM-inspired makereadies, and 18,000 sph class-leading speed equip it to cost-effectively compete against 40-inch presses. With its new perfecting capabilities, which will debut at IPEX 06 in April, the 500 adds single-pass productivity to its list of advantages, opening it up to a range of new applications in commercial printing, packaging and book manufacturing. “The perfecting option allows us to produce certain perfect bound covers which require copy to be printed on the inside front and back,” says Nason.  Worzalla executives thoroughly reviewed the field of 29-inch or three-quarter-size sheetfed presses before selecting the new perfector. They discovered that the ROLAND 500 is the only press in its class with a double-diameter perfecting drum. That equips it to handle thicker substrates than presses with traditionally sized sheet-reversing gear. The advancement also keeps perfecting speeds snappy, with a top end of 15,000 double-sided sheets per hour. It wasn’t statistics, but the performance of the perfecting 500 that really got Worzalla’s attention. “The test runs of the ROLAND 500 simply wowed us with the ease of operation, fast makeready times and speed of the press,” Nason declares. “We can’t wait to put it through its paces.” Worzalla will only have to wait until April for installation of its new 500. The press will offer five printing units for 4/1 perfecting or straight five-color jobs. A UV-capable double-coating unit will add to its single-pass productivity. The combination of perfecting and coating is expected to save Worzalla considerable time and money. “We will now be doing UV coating on-site rather than printing and then shipping covers to another company to have the coating done,” Nason explains. “The double coater will allow us to handle in-house some of the more challenging UV cover treatments that our customers need.” Ease of operation also ranked high on Worzalla’s list of requirements, according to Nason: “Our pressmen and supervisors who saw this press in action were unanimous in their thinking that it will make us so much more efficient. The running rates are impressive, the quietness of operation is very striking, but it is the extremely quick makeready that sold us on the ROLAND 500.” The job-to-job responsiveness of the ROLAND 500 can be credited to its printnet Press Manager and automated press presetting. Worzalla already runs a fleet of sheetfed presses from MAN Roland and it networks them into a Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) system with printnet. In conjunction with its investment in the 500 perfector, the company also purchased a new four-color ROLAND 900 56-inch machine, which will also plug into its printnet network. “This press will be used to print four-color text for our customers,” says Nason. “It will allow us to replace existing presses while providing increased efficiencies in our pressroom With the two new MAN Rolands, Worzalla will add significantly to its pressroom capacity, while eliminating three existing presses from its production scheme. “Our biggest preparations at the moment have to do with selling existing equipment which will become obsolete with the installation of the two ROLAND presses we are buying,” Nason notes. “The pads that these existing presses sit on happen to be ideal for both of the new presses. Once those presses are sold and removed from service, we will focus on the training for the crews who will be running the new presses.” The Worzalla president anticipates that his new perfector will be a market pleaser in a number of meaningful ways: “We fully expect the ROLAND 500 will provide even better quality for our customers. They expect that from us. But the best part will be the elimination of the six days we have to schedule to ship out covers for UV coatings. We see a significant turn around time improvement for our customers.”