24 ■ October 5, 2010 • GRAPH EXPO
Official Show Daily • Cygnus Graphics Media
AMP Printing Invests in Complete Digital Grand Format System
California shop installs EskoArtwork Kongsberg and roll-fed and flatbed digital presses “We did a lot in two weeks, putting all
E
ver since it was founded in 1979 in Dublin, CA, AMP Printing, Inc.’s owner and president Jeff Main has under-
stood that to keep pace with market demands for improved print quality, faster turnaround times, and increasing- ly competitive pricing, he would need to provide his hands-on management team and highly-skilled printers with access to the latest tools and technolo- gies. He also realized that technology investments at the 70,000-sq.-ft.-facility needed to be well-timed and astutely- made in order to grow the business without compromising profit margins or revenues.
Complete overhaul About eight months ago, within a
two week period, the company invested in a complete digital grand format sys- tem, consisting of roll-fed and flatbed digital presses, finishing and laminating equipment and software—including an EskoArtwork (Booth 217) Kongsberg iXL 24 table along with the i-cut propri- etary graphics registration system, and SignUp software. AMP Printing sends everything to its Kongsberg table, fin- ishing a wide range of substrates, from fomecore, sintra and styrene to acrylics, sheet aluminum, and wood.
our new equipment in place,” remem- bers Jason Tempestini, color services manager, AMP Printing. “When it was installed, we got caught up in our work and just focused on surviving with the tools we had implemented. In fact, orig- inally when we purchased our Kongs- berg table, we even used it to cut stock for presentation folders and packaging. We created a huge number of mock-ups with it. Lately, the focus has been on production, where we create POS, ban- ners, and a lot of shape cut work. We also do work for retail chains, where the same materials are being shipped to a number of stores.” In the beginning, the Kongsberg table
was primarily used for mock-ups, while all the cutting files were created in Ado- be Illustrator by hand. “It was getting too painful to nest artwork in Adobe Illustrator. It was eating up too much time to figure out how to get a job done. We had to find a better solution. We realized we had to learn how to use SignUp,” explains Tempestini.
Learning new software Out of necessity, AMP Printing began to learn how to operate SignUp, sending it PDF files, and allowing SignUp to nest images and create both the print PDF
Best of the Best Celebrated
Printing Impressions inducts new members into its Hall of Fame
T
he Gold Ink Awards & Hall of Fame gala was held last night in the Regency Ballroom at the Hyatt Regency McCor-
mick Place. The gala, which salutes the producers of the finest printed work in the industry, also inducted eight new members into the Publishing Executive Hall of Fame and the Printing Impres- sions/RIT Hall of Fame.
The Printing Impressions/RIT Hall of Fame Inductees are: • Joan Davison, Group President, Sheridan Publication Services • Gary Garner, President & CEO, GLS Companies
• Ed Garvey, President & CEO, The Garvey Group • Joe Metzger, President, Metzgers
Publishing Executive Hall of Fame Inductees are: • Ken Brooks, Senior VP, Global Production and Manufacturing Ser- vices, Cengage Learning • Michael Lonier, CIO & EVP of Operations, The Deal • Bill Amstutz, Director of Publish- ing Operations and Strategic Planning, NewBay Media
• Bob Sacks, President/Publisher, Precision Media Group
file for the digital presses and cutting files for the Kongsberg iXL 24. Sign- Up even creates the registration marks for their i-Cut tools on the Kongsberg table to correctly orient the registration accurately. “Once we learned SignUp, it worked great. We even started creat- ing backed up pieces—building two pdf files for the same cuts—and it worked out just fine. It creates the flops, the structural information, everything. The first job we backed up worked great. We know that many designers shy away from two-sided work because they know it can be tough, but for us it’s easy,” says Tempestini. “We had an unusually shaped check stand sign for a national grocery chain,” he recalls. “When jobs like this used to come in, we expected disaster. This had five or six elements, difficult dielines, and a critical backup. It was roughly 9x13” and had to be printed front and back. I sat in a meeting with all the stakeholders—the production manag-
er, the prepress manager, and others. They expected at least four hours of rework. We just sent it to the Kongsberg table, printed and cut 35 pieces a board, roughly three minutes a board. It took us only a couple days to print and cut the entire job.” The Kongsberg table and SignUp automate unusual shapes and square cut materials through AMP’s grand format department, while saving 75% of their production time and 20% in materials savings. Before, it took 20-30 minutes to set jobs to cut. Now it takes only 5-10 minutes. “The Kongsberg table was a helpful standalone tool, but the addition of SignUp made it an invaluable work- flow,” concludes Tempestini. “SignUp’s nesting is very tight. It can place more on the sheet than we think is possible. Even adding one or two more pieces per sheet is very important. If we con- tinued working with Adobe Illustrator, we would never have known how much work we could set up.”
Red2Go Launched by RedTie New Software as a Service (SAS) offering available to printers of all sizes
R
edTie Limited (Booth 1072) is launching Red- 2Go, a pay-as-you-go Web-to-print
solution,
and RedTie Academy, an on-line training program. Red2Go allows print providers of any size or pro- duction environment to offer on- line ordering. RedTie’s Red2Go and RedTie Academy on-line training solutions are being demonstrated at RedTie (Booth 1072( and Hewlett Packard (Booth 1200). The Red2Go model allows com- panies to sign up for the RedTie Template (RTT) Web-to-print solu- tion on-line, and participate in web- based implementation and training at the new, industry-leading RedTie Academy, all for a low monthly fee. “Today’s
print providers need
tools that will secure the on-going success of their business but often have limited time and resources to embrace new methods to retain or capture new revenue. The U.S. mar- ket has embraced Web-to-print and Red2Go allows them to get all the benefits of a W2P solution without the need for a big expense upfront,” explains Marian Stefani, CEO of
RedTie. “Busy printers need an easy to purchase, easy to train and easy to implement on-line ordering solu- tion that is not a drain on resources and this is exactly what Red2Go is designed to deliver. Sign up on-line, pay on-line, train on-line, and then capture orders on-line that can be delivered directly into your work- flow whatever production environ- ment you have.”
Partnering with HP Also at GRAPH EXPO, RedTie announced that its partnership with HP North America has been con- firmed. “We’re delighted to continue to
expand our relationship with Hewlett Packard, allowing us to bring our expertise and experience to HP’s Indigo customers. Having such trusted partners to endorse RedTie has opened up the market for us and helped us to provide print service providers worldwide with the abil- ity to offer a robust ordering solu- tion that’s focused on growing their online revenues,” said Dominic Le Claire, RedTie’s General Manager for North America.
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