Kennesaw, Ga. -- North Star Printing, a commercial printer in Spanish Fork, Utah, last month installed a Heidelberg Speedmaster CD 74 5-color press with aqueous coater and Axis Control color measuring system to take advantage of its numerous Prinect modules. The company is one of the most highly Prinected print shops in the nation, having installed every Prinect module from Prinance MIS to Prepress Manager workflow to web-based customer interface via Direct Access.
 
The result? “Holy cow!” exclaims Neal Foster, the company’s owner, not sure where to begin singing the praises of the new press. “We just enter a job from Prepress Manager and it’s off to the races. Everything is preset: run length, job size, ink keys - you name it. Makeready takes just five minutes, compared with 35 minutes on our older press, and we’re averaging just 175 sheets to come up to color, thanks to Axis Control, which also enabled us to verify with the G7 color standard in just two days. The press is hungry, too. We’re running 15,000 sph on all kinds of substrates. Where we used to run five or six jobs per shift, we now can handle 10 to 12. We have not found a difficult job yet. We’ve more than doubled our productivity. It’s just crazy what this press can do in conjunction with Heidelberg Prinect products.”
 
Other Heidelberg equipment in use at North Star includes a Speedmaster SM 74 8-color press, Prosetter 74 SCL, Stahl ST 270 saddlestitcher, and a POLAR 92 X programmable paper cutter. The company also uses Heidelberg Saphira violet plates, as well as Saphira Perfect Dot Blankets, ink foils, fountain solution and press wash.
 
In business for 14 years and with a staff of 24, North Star serves a client base in Salt Lake City and its surrounding areas. Since it began using Heidelberg’s Prinect Direct Access customer portal just 12 months ago, however, the company also has experienced a 20 percent growth in its internet-based business.