Apprintable grows again with Morgana booklet maker

Apprintable grows again with Morgana booklet maker

“We had been outsourcing an ever-increasing amount of binding work. When we examined the numbers in detail, and the amount of margin that we were giving away, it was clear that we should now be producing this work in-house with our own equipment,” said Peter Haddad, Managing Director of Apprintable.

“The new booklet maker is very robust – and it just eats up the work, faster than we can print it sometimes. There’s no doubt that it could keep up with two print engines working full-time – but that’s for the future. The fact that we can use the two bins on the feeder to produce the jobs at high speed – one bin for the heavier weight, laminated cover perhaps, and the second bin for the inner pages – is just great for now. It really does produce booklets quickly and efficiently,” he adds. Currently the company has one full time engine, a Xerox Versant 280, with its predecessor, a Ricoh Pro C5300s, still retained as a back-up for those really busy days.

Booklets produced with recycled paper is a niche where Apprintable is winning work at the moment. Customers are keen to find a supplier that can produce print using recycled stock, and there appears to be only a small number of online producers out there that are able to offer a solution at a reasonable price, said Peter Haddad.

The purchase of a new guillotine has also helped speed up production on the shop floor. “Our previous guillotine was fairly basic – yes, it cut paper, but the new EBA ideal 56 can store a multitude of different cut combinations. It can then guide the operator through each stage of the process – telling them when to turn the paper, and when to cut. It really does speed up the whole process, and it is usable by any of our team. You don’t need to be a guillotine expert anymore.”

Going back to the BM4050 binder, Peter added: “I particularly like the fact that the machine is so easy to set up – that’s important when you have inexperienced operators using it. The SquareBack finish is a great enhancement for us to speak to people about – it’s not something that we were ever offered when we were outsourcing, so it’s a new feature for our customers. The “perfect bound” appearance is something to promote to graphic designers, in that the spine that can now be printed on for the larger pagination booklets.”

When talking of jobs processed to date, one larger, same-day job came to mind: “1,600 books, 28-pages, printing and binding. We imaged a portion of the text pages so that we could get the binding started, whilst then running the rest of the job on the print engine. It all worked well, and we got the job out on time.” A fine example of where outsourcing the binding just wouldn’t have worked.

About Apprintable

From humble beginnings, Apprintable was built from the ground up. With the goal to improve the quality of the print industry, whilst maintaining a low, fair price. Based in West London, Apprintable presents the premier online printing platform for obtaining personal, promotional, commercial, and informational print products at the lowest prices.

The business has grown quickly, and moved to larger premises in September, 2022. It is now housed in a 3,000sq.ft. leased site in an industrial part of Wembley. “We’ve invested over a quarter-of-a-million pounds in the past two-and-a-half years into our own production equipment, despite the circumstances of the pandemic and recent toughening of market conditions,” added Peter.

If the Apprintable name seems familiar, that could be down to its frequent appearance courtesy of Google ads! A piece of promotional activity that Peter Haddap says is paying for itself time and time again. Whether it’s a small, one-off order, or a company that returns time and again for quantities of the wide range of promotional items, and regular print that Apprintable can produce, it’s been a worthwhile investment. The company holds a good SEO position for a number of its leading products.

See Apprintable online https://www.apprintable.com for a full selection of available product.

“I particularly like the fact that the machine is so easy to set up – that’s important when you have inexperienced operators using it. The SquareBack finish is a great enhancement for us to speak to people about – it’s not something that we were ever offered when we were outsourcing, so it’s a new feature for our customers. The “perfect bound” appearance is something to promote to graphic designers, in that the spine that can now be printed on for the larger pagination booklets.”

Morgana Systems BM4000

The Morgana Systems BM4000 series of booklet makers produce consistently high-quality booklets in a wide range of sizes and media types. The basic configuration, with hand feed capability, enables users to make booklets in an offline mode, meaning that one binder can service multiple print engines.

BM4050 can produce corner stapled documents in portrait A4, as well as edge stapled documents in portrait, plus the popular landscape A4, with up to 200-page booklet capacity. The unit can also support long sheets of up to 660mm, without the Creasing and Side slitting module (CST) or 620mm with CST.

The unit’s heavy duty staple mechanism has been designed for durability, and is maintenance free thanks to a patented solution that eliminates periodic service intervals. Users are able to adjust both the staple and fold positions though the easy initial set-up. The BM4000 series machines have a patented “set positioning mechanism” that allows the operator to adjust the staple position and the direction of travel from the intuitive user interface.

Operators can now also compensate for the skew caused when feeding long sheets with a simple adjustment in the user interface, on the fly. Apprintable can now produce SquareFold booklets in sizes from A6 to A4 Landscape, or in the larger A4-square-format 297 x 297mm.