Thando takes the strain at Hartcliffe

When Bristol-based screen printers, Hartcliffe Ltd., diversified into litho printing a Thando B1 pile turner from Encore Machinery was one of their top priorities. "The last two companies I worked for had Thando pile turners and, when we set up the new litho unit, I immediately bought another," said Peter French.

"A lot of the silk screen work was single sided but now that we have installed a Heidelberg Speedmaster B1 press with coater, we couldn't live without it. We do a lot of coating and, together with the brochure work, we turn over hundreds of thousands of sheets each month. It would probably take us up to an hour to turn over a pallet of B1 paper manually, let alone the physical toll it would put on our operators. By automating the process, we do it in matter of seconds.

"We also use it to knock up the sheets. For example, if we are doing a 10,000 run, we will knock up a pallet of paper and then put in another 2000 sheets. It is much quicker and more productive than doing it by hand."