June 18, 2007 -- South Florida shop increases capacity with faster makeready and higher quality KBA North America, a leading press manufacturer based in Williston, Vt., is announcing that Commercial Printers, Inc., a Pompano Beach, Florida commercial printer, has been increasing its output and posting triple-digit faster makeready since the installation of its KBA Rapida 105 41-inch five-color perfector press with coater. The new press was installed in February 2006.
 
“Our new KBA 41-inch-perfector press has been giving us the quality, speed, and flexibility that we needed,” says Jeff Runde, president of Commercial Printers, Inc. “This is our first KBA press and we couldn’t be more pleased. It allows us to compete on longer run jobs, such as magazines. Plus, it gives us the flexibility to print straight five-color jobs at 18,000 sph or two-over-three perfector jobs at 15,000 sph.”

New-generation perfector press shines with highest automation and ultra short make-readies
While the South Florida firm did not replace any of its existing presses, the new press provided much needed capacity and automation. Prior to installing the KBA press, Commercial Printers, Inc. was using a less-automated 40-inch sheetfed press and a few smaller-format presses. Now, according to Runde, the firm has the ability to produce high-quality straight printing, which is 70% of its workload, and perfecting, which is 30% of its workload..
 
“Our KBA gives us the flexibility to print an increasing number of straight or perfecting jobs,” says Runde, “in a much faster fashion because the press is equipped with fully-automatic auto plate loading, auto wash-up, and the KBA Densitronic S system. Our makereadies are 125% faster than before and we have been able to add a lot more work. The coater on the press gives us the ability to do some beautiful special effect work that we couldn’t do before and because we can coat jobs now it has sped up the bindery process. We’re a more efficient printer and we can pass those efficiencies to our customers. We’ve cut waste due to the new press because we’re not using as much paper. All of these savings will allow us to keep investing in new technology.”