RIPit User: Shelley Printers

SpeedSetter VM CtP improves productivity at Shelley Printers

Shelley Printers, a 30-year old commercial print shop in Leicester, UK recently installed RIPit’s SpeedSetter^® VM together
with the OpenRIP Symphony workflow has experienced savings no one had ever expected.

In June this year, Nigel Bellamy, managing director of Shelley Printers Ltd, Leicester took the decision to replace his old Linotype
Herkules filmsetter with a modern computer-to-plate (CtP) solution. He chose the RIPit SpeedSetter VM for the B3 format to make the
plates for his two Heidelberg GTO 52 presses – one a two-colour, the other a four-colour. The shop's main work consists of mailers,
four-colour envelopes, stationery, but also brochures, flyers and books as well as many other commercial jobs.

Nigel Bellamy’s decision for the SpeedSetter VM was based on two factors – price and simplicity of operation. “The SpeedSetter VM CtP
is a very straightforward machine. The less complexity a machine has, the less can go wrong. It is very simple. We open the front,
load the plate in by placing it against the stops in the drum, close the lid. The machine then images the plates and after it has finished
we just open the lid again and retrieve the imaged plate. Straightforward and easy to use. In addition, the SpeedSetter VM images
violet metal plates which meant that as the shop already has been using metal plates over the last decade, few settings at the press
had to be changed.

The installation in July by RSR took only four days and went very smoothly, the 53-year old founder of the company reports. No hitches
were experienced and even the first jobs already showed the potential the SpeedSetter brings to the shop. “One of the first jobs we did
was a 216-page book. Imaging the plates on our new CtP-device saved us a lot of time and all plates show crisp dots and far better
quality than we had been achieving up to then.” Since installation in July nothing has been the same at Shelley Printers. Nigel Bellamy
and his four employees are experiencing savings, especially productivity and time savings and far less press downtime, he would not
have thought possible before implementing the SpeedSetter VM.

“Nowadays, the margins on print jobs are very tight. Tighter than in any time I can recall. Any improvement in productivity is beneficial.
With the SpeedSetter VM we now use half the time we used to in order to make plates. This has an effect on the whole shop.” “The
quality of the plates is really great. Everything is fine, we now see sharper dots, cleaner images and the plates are exactly on register”,
reports Nigel Bellamy convincingly. “Our downtime on press is lower than when we were using conventional plates made from film. We
are up and running in half the time. And there is nothing to correct on them. A real work and time-saver” With a resolution of up to
2540 dpi and a screen ruling of 200+ lpi, achieving a spot size of 10?m and a repeatability of twentyfive microns, the SpeedSetter VM
fully satisfies the demands Shelley Printers have. Its maximum speed is 13 landscape plates per hour.

Shelley Printers, who up to the implementation of the SpeedSetter VM did not have a fully digital workflow, decided to go for OpenRIP
Symphony, RIPit’s Adobe PostScript 3-RIP workflow. Files are transferred directly from the prepress department using Quark as a
layout tool. OpenRip Symphony then offers Nigel Bellamy and his employees the ability to monitor the preview and check up on all
page elements, colours, traps, knockouts and overprints before sending the file to the platesetter. In addition the software incorporates
Adobe Accurate Screens and Agfa Balanced Screening which provides for consistent screens and clean halftone spots. Each press can be
serviced by choosing different plate settings whereby plate characteristics such as header, gripper, image size and tail length can be
specified and saved. Also, the software incorporates linerarization and press dot gain compensation tools, page information and colour
bars, PDF 1.5 support, raster view, just to name a few.

“The workflow software is equally as straightforward as the SpeedSetter”, Nigel Bellamy says. “There is no long learning curve and its
ease of use makes it possible for everyone working in our shop to trigger the output of plates. So we don’t need to wait on a specific
person to output a plate. When the file is ready, anyone can do it, once you get used to it.” The SpeedSetter VM images violet metal
plates from 241mm x 381mm to 530mm x 505mm with a 60 mW laser. The internal drum CtP machine has an imaging speed of
2.1 mm/sec and accommodates media thicknesses from 0.15mm to 0.3mm. All major brands of violet metal plates can be used. All
SpeedSetter VM platesetters include a common interface to a Windows PC and the new ImagerQ Concerto TIFF server software so that
the RIP is decoupled from the CtP device to improve system performance and to enable the workflow to be managed from the studio
area while plate output is independently controlled at the SpeedSetter.

	Shelley Printers Ltd. 37a Lytham Road in Leicester Leicestershire, UK. (tel: 0116 270 4848)

Local RIPit Dealer: Repro Sales and Repairs, Rayleigh, UK (tel: 01268 786026)
RIPit Master Distributor: TECSA Limited, Diss, Norfolk, UK (tel: 01379 641184) www.tecsa.com ^®