Fourth-generation John Fisher Printing has invested in a new Zund cutting system to speed up its digital production with an eye on prototype design for the growing packaging and point-of-sale markets.
“All this has been put in place to handle an increase in volumes of customers’ digital print requirements and to boost production throughput,” says Tony Fisher, director of POS visual displays & packaging at John Fisher Printing, the iconic Sydney printer established 66 years ago by Tony's grandfather and now based at Marrickville in the inner west.
“The Zund enables us to engage other markets in prototype design for packaging and point of sale items. This is due to the fact that we have also acquired the Design Cut Centre software. We have hundreds of different carton designs, from Pizza boxes to Direct impact mailers, to ‘FEFCO’ packaging boxes, dumpbins and items such as struts for standees. The 3D component allows the customer to check the box from every angle before production commences.
“Many items can be adapted to suit the size of the customers’ product, which allows us to become the designer as well as the printer and finisher of the clients’ campaign,” Fisher says.
“We have also needed specific sized boxes to package oversize digitally printed jobs from standard corrugated sheets. This allows ‘just-in-time’ style printing, without having to wait for specific made shippers from the larger packaging suppliers.”
Fisher says the multifunctional Zund G3 2XL 3200 digital cutting system was installed without a hitch by a team from Starleaton and has been welcomed by staff members.
“The automated features on the new Zund are a welcome addition and highly regarded by our production team, who like it because it’s easy to adopt and learn new features and is more intuitive than previous cutters we have had. Service and reliability was also a big factor in the purchase and Starleaton have the service covered.”
The new Zund includes a new Tandem bed operating system, which allows for a semi-automated production cutting set-up for larger volume prints. (See video below).
Fisher says other features include: “Reverse side cut/crease of corrugated boards with auto recognition; ‘Reverse mode/Flip function’ - allows cutting & creasing from the back for corrugated boards, cutter sets up automatically by recognising the edge of sheet and positions the cut/crease perfectly when the sheet is flipped; Allows larger sheets sizes to be handled up to 2.5m x 3.2m (previously we could only cut sheets to 1500x2440mm); Operating speed is much higher than previous for faster cutting of multiple substrates; and drag knife cuts on materials, whereas before an oscillating tool was required.”
John Fisher Printing offers wide format UV printing, digital print, offset litho, packaging, point-of-sale display, direct mail, graphic design, marketing and has a 3D design facility.