Brailsford adds first Morgana ColorCut SC6000

John Brailsford Printers, “Yorkshire’s Favourite, Fast, Friendly Quick Printer!”, has become the first UK print business to install a Morgana ColorCut SC6000 digital die-cutting and creasing machine. Morgana Systems Ltd, Milton Keynes, a Plockmatic International post-press product business, debuted the product earlier this year at the Hunkeler Innovation Days.

ColorCut SC6000 is a freestanding, “on-demand” digital sheet cutter and creaser, with no physical cutting dies or time-consuming set-up costs. The unit is targeted at busy print businesses seeking an affordable, high-capacity device, capable of completely unattended cutting production. The compact, free-standing device is conveniently mobile, and can be easily accommodated in any print shop. It is ideal for the production of labels, stickers, display materials, short run packaging work, and other “any shape” cut-out jobs.

John Brailsford Printers, the Rotherham shop-fronted business, had reviewed a number of potential products in the cutting and creasing sector, but nothing quite fitted the bill.

The Morgana ColorCut SC6000 is a revolutionary type of automated cutter, blending flatbed and sheet fed technologies, with a maximum working area of 340 x 710mm / 13.4″ x 30″. The SC6000 combines ultra-reliable feeding with an instant job retrieval system, and flawless high-speed cutting and creasing. This model is the new “bigger brother” of the highly successful Intec ColorCut SC5000, with a range of updated features.

“We introduced the SC6000 to our studio people initially. They are the techie people who deal with files in our pre-press. They were able to easily understand the “front-end” of the machine. The output from the studio, including cutting requirements and run length, is encapsulated in a QR code, meaning that all the people at the post-press end of the factory need to concern themselves with is selecting the right stock and scanning the QR code printed on the job.”

“This machine is quite amazing. The results have been quite superb. We keep thinking up new ways of using it – with labels, for example, we are now running through our stock of pre-cut labels, and then we can simply use the SC6000 to kiss-cut the labels for us on plain adhesive-backed stock. That means any sized, or shaped, self-adhesive label is possible, and we don’t need to have the expense of holding any stock of various sized at all.”

“Another area where we realised that the machine could help us: dividers. We produce these for a number of customers. Dividers, to go into work books, or educational folders. We can have the SC6000 cut-out the card for the tab, and even cut the holes for the binders at the same time. It’s not necessarily faster, but we can set the machine to produce these dividers and it will just run, while the operator gets on with other jobs,” added John.

The digital cutting head can apply up to 750g of force, individually, for both the cutting and creasing tools. Their actions are controlled via the ColorCut Pro software, which is included in the purchase. In common with the entire ColorCut family, the SC6000 can be set to apply exact amounts of pressure and speed, along with total control over the application of cut, crease and perforation of the vector artwork lines.

Focussing on the feeder on the ColorCut SC6000, John was extremely impressed: “The feeder is a critical element for such a machine, and this one is amazing! It will feed virtually any stock, it seems, eliminating any static issues, and the potential for any doubles.”

“We had been sending work such as short run boxes, pocket folders, and various other cut-outs, to an external supplier. That kind of work has definitely been on the increase, so this really was the right time for us to bring such tasks in-house – it’s going to cut our outwork bill significantly, and therefore will pay for itself in no time.” The company has been using plastic boxes for the delivery of business cards to customers. Now they are producing cardboard boxes with the help of the SC6000 – more convenient and better for the environment.

A revolutionary cutting strip, based on the superior cutting mats used in Intec flatbeds, provides for an optimal surface for both cut-through, creasing, and kiss-cut. SmartTags are left in the cut lines to retain the job information on the sheet, leaving a tidy and manageable stack of finished sheets in the catch tray.

Ray Hillhouse, Plockmatic VP of Sales & Marketing, said: “The ColorCut 6000 is going to be a very popular product for the small to medium sized print business. Everywhere we’ve shown it printers have been excited about what it can do for them – and the more they think about the machine and its potential, like John and his team, the more new ideas they are coming up with. That simple process must make the justification for making a purchase of the machine a very straightforward process! I can easily see the SC6000 being our most successful product.”

“Keeping control of the delivery of work, as well as keeping the margin that would have been lost by sending work out – these are the critical factors that printers tell us frequently when purchasing this type of product.”