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“Cracking was a huge problem for us,” reveals Gordon Rivera, coordinator of Campus Graphics at Allan Hancock College.
He would cringe each time a nice four-color brochure came out of the shop’s Xerox DocuColor 250, went through its Challenge SRA3 tabletop folder and emerged with cracked toner on the folds. This wasn’t the professional-looking work Rivera wanted to be handing to customers at the Santa Maria, Calif.-based public community college.
In March, though, this problem finally went away for good when the four-employee shop installed a new MBO B118 folder with a pile feeder, a right angle attachment and three Ultimate Score creasing heads. Now brochures are scored and folded in one pass, and cracking is a thing of the past, allowing the in-plant to produce marketing pieces that Rivera can be proud of.
“We’re happy with it,” he enthuses.
With the new folder comes new capabilities too.
“Now we can do full signature folding,” he reveals—and the shop’s been doing a lot of signature work.
Prior to deciding on the MBO B118, Rivera had been considering some scoring options, but since the shop also needed a new folder, he decided to request funds for a folder that included scoring. He gave a presentation to the committee overseeing purchasing, and he admits they were reluctant. But he had calculated the cost of continuing to outsource signature folding and estimated a seven-year return on investment for the new folder.
“It’s a capital investment, but it’s not like we’re going to trade it in, in five or six years for another model,” he explains. “It’s going to be with us for 15-20 years.”
The best part, he says, is that he no longer has to warn customers that their digital jobs will have cracking on the folds, or alter the design to add white lines along the folds.
“We’re not limited by equipment as far as what we can do,” he says. And this more professional look lets the in-plant compete better with local printers, he adds.
Companies Mentioned:
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A Field Guide to Folding
Introduction to Graphic Communication