PowerCollator Purchase Results in Productivity Improvements

A Horizon VAC-Turbo Powercollator was the first official purchase of the newly established Whitesprint Ltd in Sheffield.

Formed through the merger of B2 Printer Paul Scott Print and B3 firm Whites Print the system from print finishing specialist supplier GAE was installed to relieve a bottleneck in the bindery.

“We merged the two companies to expand the offering to both sets of existing customers as well as the new business we hope to attract,” explains managing director John White. “We then found a lot of our work was being hand-collated and our staff were spending up to 60 hours a week on collation alone.

“But since the Horizon system has come in this has been cut to less than a day. It has reduced the pressure on a traditional bottleneck in the finishing process that was very labour intensive. ”

Mr White looked at other options on the market before ordering the collator: “I know Horizon and this collator is still, as far as I am concerned, the most reliable and fastest on the market. Another big plus is the wide range of paper that it can run including satin and gloss coated stock.”

The 10-station, deep bin VAC-Turbo 100 system features a user-friendly intelligent touchscreen interface for easy operation with a remote handset to aid control while loading or unloading. The patented Horizon advanced suction rotor drum feeding system operates effectively on a wide variety of paper stocks at high speeds.

A key benefit is the non-stop collating mode which allows the stations to be split into two and married so that the job can be run continuously  – when any bin empties in one set of bins, collation is routed to the second set without pausing. Accuracy and reliability are assured by mis-feed, double feed and jamming sensors on each bin; the feed error history can be monitored via the touchscreen.

Mr White added: “It has been faultless... it works like a dream.”

Customers of the provider of commercial, variable data and large format print include local business, particularly in the automotive and educational sectors as well as advertising and design agencies.