Kennesaw, GA - M13 Graphics, Inc. is an online retail design and printing company currently in transition from outside brokering to in-house manufacturing. To help negotiate the shift, the company recently installed a pair of POLAR 115 XT guillotine cutters with lifts, jogger and scales, and proceeded to network them via Heidelberg Compucut software. Compucut creates efficient cutting programs for M13's POLAR high-speed cutters by generating all required presettings from CtP files and loading the correct cutting program into the machine, enabling it to operate without interruption. This was of paramount importance to the company, whose bread-and-butter derives from its ability to print, then gang run a wide variety of differently sized products-business cards, flyers, postcards, brochures, etc.-on a single sheet.

"It's like a huge jigsaw puzzle," said company owner Dan Banakis. "Before we had Compucut, it would take us anywhere from six to 10 hours at night to lay out those sheets, compared with the few minutes per form it takes now. It's a huge work- and time-saver, especially since we specialize in run lengths between 1,000 and 5,000 pieces and provide 24-hour turnaround on most projects." Not surprisingly, Banakis views autoprogramming with Compucut and waste removal via Autotrim as vital to M13's campaign to build efficiency and trim costs.

The decision to in-source its printing and cutting work will enable M13 to more closely control the quality of the work itself, and to realize a greater profit in the bargain, Banakis explains. "Outsourcing the kind of work we do often meant that our jobs would get pushed to the end of the queue and compromise our ability to provide next-day service."

M13 Graphics, which had been operating from a temporary facility in nearby Morton Grove, IL, commenced business in its new manufacturing mode from its expanded headquarters in Schaumburg on Sept. 1.

One sharp cookie: the POLAR 115 XT with Autotrim <http:www.us.heidelberg.com/www/html/en/content/products/postpress/cutting/polar/polar_115>