Minuteman Press Bath – the UK’s largest Minuteman franchise – has started the new year by extending its range of cutting machines.
The firm has become the first in the UK to acquire a state-of-the-art Valiani Optima V 250 flat-bed cutting table, which has allowed it to perform short-run cutting in-house.
The Italian-built machine, which bought Minuteman Press Bath bought from Milton Keynes-based Morgana Systems, minimises waste and is suitable for a wide variety of applications, including frame mount-board cutting, boxes and displays, contour cutting, embossing, stickers, as well making prototypes, marketing products and mock-ups.
It also boasts a patented tool change mechanism, which allows tools to be changed in less than 30 seconds and means the user can move from cutting to tasks such as creasing, perforating and embossing swiftly.
Minuteman Press Bath sales & marketing director Dave Dixon said: “We needed something that was going to provide us with a quality short-run in-house cutting facility. Sending such work out just adds time and cost to a job, in addition to the fact that you lose control over production.”
Last year he visited the largest printing equipment exhibition in the world, Drupa, which is held every four years in Düsseldorf, to see products that could fit the bill.
“After visiting the Valiani factory in Italy, the Valiani Optima V 250 ticked all of the boxes for us,” he said.
“Short-run packaging, shaped business cards, folders and flyers, plus signage work were the initial areas of work that we had in mind, but we are already discovering a host of other possibilities.
“Almost immediately we picked up a job requiring cut tabs within a report and cut lettering from rigid PVC – the Valiani was able to handle that very quickly and very easily. In the packaging market we are talking to a number of companies about test cartons that they want to produce. The Valiani gives us a very cost effective solution to producing such ultra-short “proofing” runs.
“The potential of such a product is limited only by the imagination – and our in-house design team have very vivid imaginations.”
The 19-year-old firm employs a 15 people.
Morgana Systems vice-president, offline business, Ray Hillhouse, said: “We are delighted that Minuteman Press Bath has become the first UK business to see the potential offered by the largest format Optima 250 cutting table.
“These machines offer a whole host of possibilities for printers and their customers. Graphic designers get very excited about the possibilities that are on offer, and the young team at Minuteman Press are already coming up with new and interesting applications.”
Pictured: Dave Dixon, sales and marketing director, left, with David Ghent, managing director
