3m Digital Impressions A Month In Rapid Time

Only three months after installing its first ever Xerox iGen3 digital production press, transactional document and mailing printer 3D Digital is producing one million impressions a month.

Only three months after installing its first ever Xerox iGen3 digital production press, transactional document and mailing printer 3D Digital is producing one million impressions a month from its new press.

The London company is one of the original Xerox premier partner members and bought the iGen3 to fulfil its need for variable data digital products.

Two special projects have helped the company achieve its volume goals.

The first was a personalised booklet called 'The Book of the Heart', from Daily Mail astrologer Jonathan Caner.

More than 48,000 readers participated in a promotion where they sent in newspaper tokens for the chance to be given their own individual astrology readings.

The second project was from a consortium of local councils that produced a series of planning applications brochures for the Olympics 2012 planning bid.

The A4 booklets ranged in size from 100 pages to 800 pages each, all of which were short run and had different sections that were unique to each bid and amounted to a print run of more than 400,000 pages.

3D Digital's managing director Dave Moyse said: "Both projects were applications that would not have been possible without the iGen3 press.

The Daily Mail promotion used a formula that worked out people's star sign predictions based on their birth dates and times producing a set of results that was unique for almost every participant.

The Olympics documents, on the other hand, were very short run but very high pagination documents.

Each one was printed in four-colour throughout and it would have been very costly and time consuming to produce them on conventional litho presses, which would have meant making plate changes on every new section." He said that the iGen3 gave 3D Digital the versatility and flexibility to handle each problem simply and cost effectively.

Moyse has been a Xerox customer for the last 20 years and when he started 3D Digital in 1997 with his partner Dave Whitnall, they decided to continue the Xerox relationship.

3D Digital now also operates two Xerox Docucolor 2060s and a Docucolor 6060 digital colour press, along with a number of conventional printing presses.

In Moyse's opinion it was just a matter of waiting for the market in digital colour to mature to make the investment in the iGen3.

The press is running with the Creo Spire front end and using Creo's Darwin and Program Products' PReS personalisation software.

Moyse added: "Our entry into the digital colour printing market in 2000 may have been a little premature but only because the market conditions were quite difficult.

Since then we have seen a significant growth in the colour and variable data arena and we have established ourselves very well using the Xerox equipment.

Customers are now coming to us and specifying using the iGen3, they will not consider using anything else." He added that when his company came to look at digital presses it considered that the iGen3 had a better front end than other manufacturers and could handle variable data much better.

"The flexibility of the press itself was also a distinct advantage and the quality of the digital colour is always good enough for the end user and is comparable or even superior to offset quality," he continued.

Xerox director of graphic arts Peter Taylor commented: "3D Digital is a highly valued customer and we have been working with Dave Moyse and his team for many years.

The projects that the company is now running demonstrate the flexibility, versatility and power of the iGen3.

The more that customers know and understand about variable data printing and the quality that can be achieved with the iGen3, then the more they will keep coming back and specifying it as the printer of choice now and in the future." Moyse concluded: "We never expected to be printing a million impressions a month so quickly, but the volume and the demand for new applications is there, so we are very pleased with the results.

The future is to do more of the same.

As mass marketing is replaced with one-to-one profiling digital volumes will continue to grow and the iGen3 is equipped to cope.".

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