Creaser Compliments Digital Printer

Ashgate Automation has installed one of the first of its new KAS Crease Matic 150 programmable card creasers at Vision Print Marketing in Wolverhampton (UK).

Ashgate Automation has installed one of the first of its new KAS Crease Matic 150 programmable card creasers at Vision Print Marketing in Wolverhampton (UK).

Vision had already taken delivery of a Canon 3200 digital printer and needed a creaser to go with it.

The company's managing director Simon Wood said: "On this site we specialise primarily in large format digital printing.

We bought the Canon because we needed the flexibility and quick make ready.

We produce all the pub promotions for a large chain of pubs.

Those include posters, wrist slappers, leaflets and menus for instance, with run lengths ranging from 500 to several thousand.

We were printing everything litho but found that it was becoming increasingly difficult to meet their tight deadlines of no more than one or two days.

As well as quicker make-ready, we have found digital printing to be more competitive on shorter runs." He said that the company needed a digital creaser to prevent the problem of cracking, so Ashgate was contacted and such was its confidence that a demonstration machine was left with Vision to run trials.

"We virtually bought it on the spot and Ashgate has just delivered our new one.

The Crease Matic 150 fills the gap between desktop card creasers and the fully automatic suction feed models currently available.

The machine users a matrix style crease and up to 2,000 sheets an hour can be stream-fed by hand.

The operator can programme up to four creases per sheet on card from A5 to SRA3 and 6 page A4," said Wood.

He added that up to five regular creasing jobs could be programmed into the memory function, which is fitted as standard.

The crease positions could be edited should the layout of the job change.

"We were impressed by the quality of the crease, which in our opinion is just as good as the high volume auto creaser on the market, which is about twice as expensive," said Wood.

"It can handle all weights of board up to 300gsm.

We frequently print 500 menus, 100 for each pub, and we can hand feed it through the creaser in no time flat," he added.

Ashgate supplied the Crease Matic as a package with the Horizon P330 fully automatic suction feed folder, so that Vision can print, crease and fold jobs in-house.

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