Riding on the wave of success for automated printing

A stalwart of offset printing and a trailblazer for digital printing

“We were concerned about the emergence of the internet and new digital communication channels and were starting to experience a decline in average print runs and a drastic reduction in delivery times”, explains Filacorda. “We realised that digital printing was the only tool suitable for some types of production and we were able to rely on various suppliers to embrace that”.

The collaboration with Konica Minolta began in 2018 thanks to consultancy work carried out by one of their certified partner companies, Tinet, which thoroughly analysed the needs of Grafiche Filacorda.

The collaboration was finalised with the installation of an AccurioPress C6085 and a bizhub PRESS C1070, both of which provided a level of quality, reliability and operational economy that was valued by Grafiche Filacorda.

By the start of 2022, the resulting rapid growth in volume meant that the company needed to purchase a higher performance machine.

After several demonstrations, coordinated by Tinet, Grafiche Filacorda chose to invest in the AccurioPress C12000, Konica Minolta‘s flagship toner system product. The unit has provided a range of benefits, including exceptionally high quality and an appearance and texture similar to that of offset printing. In addition, the C12000 supports many different types of digital and offset paper in weights of up to 450 g/m2 and sizes of up to 330 x 1,300 mm.

“Instead of lamination, today‘s customers want natural paper, often with an embossed or ham-mered finish or with other special textures”, says Filacorda. “Thanks to its flexibility, the AccurioPress C12000 combines all the benefits of digital printing with many features from offset printing, which is why we use it more and more often, even for medium print runs”.

TU-510: Inline finishing for fast delivery times

Even though Grafiche Filacorda doesn’t sell services online, urgent deliveries are still a daily challenge. That’s why, when the company heard about the new Konica Minolta TU-510 finishing unit, they wanted to be the first to have it.

The module is compatible with the C12000 and C14000 models and can perform four-edge trimming and creasing (up to five creases on the same sheet), divide an SRA3 sheet into two A4 sheets and punch business cards. The TU-510 Profile Manager enables the operator to easily create and save presets, save them to and import them from USB drives, and recall them via the printer control panel or from the Internet.

“In addition to obtaining a finished product without the need for additional machine startups, we can perform operations that are useful for other departments and automate unprofitable manual processes”, continues Filacorda.

To ensure a flawless finished product, the TU-510 is connected to the IQ-501 system, which performs colour measurements and checks the registration of each printed sheet.

Grafiche Filacorda decided to integrate its Kodak Prinergy commercial workflow with the Konica Minolta AccurioPro Flux software, which simplifies impositioning, combines finishing parameters with printing and features an intuitive user interface for easy operation.

“With just a few clicks, we can create automated workflows that allow us to drag and drop the pages into the default dashboard, apply the properties for the job and send it to AccurioPro Print Manager”, explains Annalisa Zamaro, head of the graphics department. “This minimises startup time and prevents errors and rework resulting from manual operations and setup”.

The AccurioPro Flux dashboard also allows the pre-printing team to monitor and schedule incoming and outgoing jobs, detect any missing items and send alerts in case of delays in production.

AccurioPro Flux: A powerful and intuitive workflow

Grafiche Filacorda decided to integrate its Kodak Prinergy commercial workflow with the Konica Minolta AccurioPro Flux software, which simplifies im-positioning, combines finishing parameters with printing and features an intuitive user interface for easy operation.

“With just a few clicks, we can create automated workflows that allow us to drag and drop the pages into the default dashboard, apply the properties for the job and send it to AccurioPro Print Manager”, explains Annalisa Zamaro, head of the graphics department. “This minimises startup time and prevents errors and rework resulting from manual operations and setup”.

The AccurioPro Flux dashboard also allows the pre-printing team to monitor and schedule incoming and outgoing jobs, detect any missing items and send alerts in case of delays in production. Although the B1 H-UV offset printing press remains essential for jobs involving larger sizes, high volumes and lamination, the introduction of the AccurioPress C12000 has led Grafiche Filacorda to start slowly but inexorably migrating of some of its production work to digital printing. Three months after installation, the company has already diverted much of its previous 350x500 mm offset work to the new digital line.