Digital printing requires different finishing technology to offset. It’s rarely a matter of how fast you can cut and fold, but rather how can you produce different finished products at the end of the line. Aldo Burcheri and Michael Vojvodic,of Courtney Colour discovered the solution with a flatbed Zünd cutting system.
B2-size posters, custom packaging and point-of-sale materials often require complex cutting to produce customised shapes. The need for sophisticated finishing handling that size without the requirement for skilled labour to attend to it led the partners to explore flat-bed options. They quickly came to the decision that the Zünd S3M800 technology is almost tailor-made for their type of digital printing.
“Apart from the quality of the cutting, what attracted us was the ability to stack up the B2 sheets as they came off the Indigo, then auto-feed them two-up onto the Zünd S3,” said Burcheri.
The computerised workflow means the print can be loaded and left unattended, especially as more Courtney Colour customers are delivering their jobs with finishing instructions embedded in the file. Operating with IQ MIS and Pageset production workflow, the drive is on to make the throughput as efficient as possible.
“It’s important to reduce the number of touch points in the process. If we can automate the workflow it means the Zünd can be left to run without constant attendance,” said Burcheri.
Given the type of customised print, some created using Direct Smile software, the Zünd S3 can be left cutting through sheets of 400gsm board, two up, without anyone in attendance. It’s the versatility of the process that continues to impress. It can be configured for kiss-cutting/through-cutting, routing, creasing and marking.
The Swiss-made Zünd is recognised as one of the most versatile in the digital cutting space. Backed by Starleaton in Australia, it can handle an almost unlimited range of materials.
Zünd digital cutting solutions have been featured on the Discovery Channel’s Innovations with Ed Begley, Jr. The science and technology-focused series dedicated part of a recent episode to Zünd’s advanced cutting systems and the range of applications they can be used for.
Introduced by actor Ed Begley Jr and featuring interviews with representatives from Zünd America Inc. and Zünd Systemtechnik AG, the programme travelled from the USA to Switzerland to see how the machines are built and configured for each individual customer for use in a range of industries – from the sign and display and packaging sectors, to the technical textile, fabric and leather markets, to the automotive and aerospace fields.The cutting systems are even used for awnings, windsurfing sails and hot air balloons.
The show’s behind-the-scenes approach also demonstrated the ease of use offered by Zünd systems and, importantly, the ability to reconfigure them for new materials and markets thanks to their modular construction. As one interviewee notes, customers often purchase a Zünd cutter with the intention of processing one type of material before realising its potential in new markets.
Thisis an abridged version of an article on the DES blog