Give us 5 mintues of your time and we could save you hours in prepress...

This week, like most weeks, we helped a print business where an ageing RIP computer failed, leaving them without the ability to make plates, bringing production to a halt during this already very difficult period for all our businesses.

We got them back up and running, but they were without plates for nearly 2 days because they had no disaster recovery plan, no backups and an unsupported Windows 7 RIP computer which was past its end of life.

This is a recurring story: we are helping people recover from a disaster when we could be helping to avoid one.

While keeping our families safe and healthy in the current crisis is our number one concern, you are no doubt, like us, wondering just how tricky life and business is going to get in the coming weeks and months.

We wanted to let you know what we're doing and how we and others in the industry may be able to help.

We're still attending sites to provide services and installations and following reasonable precautions including avoiding hand-shakes, cleaning touch-screens and keyboards, using hand-gels and where possible maintaining some distance so we can all continue to work for as long as possible.

While we will isolate if anyone gets ill, we will otherwise be continuing to provide product and services to our customers as normal and wanted to highlight some ways in which we and the industry may be able to help you do the same.

Prepress UK, the pre-press specialists based in Brighton, has sold and installed its first PressProfiler product to a printing company in Australia. Southport Printing Co. in Queensland have purchased the ink key pre-setting system for a Heidelberg SM52.

PressProfiler integrates with the printers new Screen Equios workflow without the need for them to purchase the Equios CIP3 option, saving the company even more money than the already competitively priced Prepress UK product when compared to Heidelberg's offering.

Commenting on the purchase, Andrew Kelly of Southport Printing Company, said, “PressProfiler is a product that represents great value. To do the same with the press manufacturers own branded package would cost five times as much. The team at Prepress UK do a fantastic job at a great price!

“We were particularly impressed by the remote installation and calibration service. Faster and just as effective, but significantly more affordable, than sending an engineer to do the job. The profiles and ink sweeps are extremely accurate, saving both time and money.”

Prepress UK, the pre-press specialists based in Cheltenham and Brighton, has announced the introduction of PressReporter, a software based solution to maximise productivity by providing a view of what is happening across all of a users Heidelberg presses in real time, without the need to stand in the print room, or keep popping in to see what is happening.

PressReporter continually shows the current press status of each machine: what job is on the press, how long it has been on the press, how many sheets have been run, how many times the press has stopped, why the press has stopped, and how much waste there has been. It also provides an easy to view timeline of press productivity and events, and this is all achieved automatically, without the need for any manual input.

Pipi Print and Packaging Ltd, the Leicester-based packaging specialist, has employed the pre-press knowledge and press know-how of the team at Prepress UK as it has focused on colour quality and consistency from its pair of B2 Heidelberg sheet-fed presses.

The company had contacted Prepress UK after a recommendation from their press engineer. The company urgently needed to move forward with their colour accuracy and consistency, as well as improve make-ready times when moving from job to job.

Upgrade your Studio RIP to the latest version StudioRIP XF for new features and improved performance.

StudioRIP XF brings you: