Dauphin County Library In-plant Adds Platemaker

When your digital press doubles as a platemaker, you get the best of both worlds. At least that's what Rich Hoffner thinks. His in-plant at the Dauphin County Library System in Harrisburg, Pa., has been using the Xanté Heavyweight Champion with PlateMaker 7 to print letterheads, envelopes, handouts, banners and more. And then with a simple changeover, he produces plates for his shop's Itek 3985 press.

"It's very affordable. For a shop like ours, cost per plate is probably $1.75 to $1.80 a plate," proclaims Hoffner, Printing and Mailing Services manager.

The polyester plates have run length of about 20-25,000.

Hoffner says he switches back and forth between the HWC and the PlateMaker 7, sometimes several times a day.

“We use it to print plates for our programming for children and youth services and our adult programming,” he says.

He's very pleased with the speed of the HWC.

“Our turnaround time is fairly quick,” Hoffner says. “Sometimes we get a job in and they need to have it on the delivery shelf the following morning... With the speed of the HWC, we're able to do that.”

The in-plant also uses Xanté's iQueue software to determine job costs and for spot color matching.

“Our library brand standard consists of eight PMS colors and black, and I'm able to go in and adjust the PMS colors so that it will match across all platforms,” he says. Also, the job cost tab in the iQueue software helps Hoffner know the cost of a job before it's executed.

This new video shows how Dauphin County Library System uses the Xanté Heavyweight Champion with PlateMaker 7.