Epic’s new investment is vote of confidence in Duplo systems

Print Solutions

A strong relationship with Duplo over the last eight years has been cemented by Epic Print’s new investment in a new saddlestitcher that will achieve vast improvements in efficiency.

Duplo will be supplying Epic with an iSaddle 2 system, that will slash traditional processes and provide full automation. An investment in full automation provides benefits to the business by freeing up senior technicians’ time, which enables the business to be able to handle the four-fold increase in the number of work orders.

Managing director Mark Downey said, ‘Epic has enjoyed a strong relationship with Duplo over the last eight years and has deep confidence in both its innovation and engineering reliability.

‘The decision to move from traditional saddle binders was not taken lightly. However, the drive for quicker makereadies through the impressive automation available on the machine, made a compelling case for the investment. We expect to make a massive improvement in efficiency and the comprehensive tests that were carried out, indicated that the iSaddle out performs the current in-house traditional approach to fold, gather and stitch, even in the longer run arena.’

He continued, ‘Typically, five years ago we would be looking at print runs averaging 5000, but this is now down to 2000, sometimes even less. Whilst during this time, the number of orders has risen by around four-fold, so we needed to upgrade our finishing processes. We are confident that the iSaddle and its collating towers and in line scoring will provide us with ways in which we can enhance our performance in other areas of binding too, such as wiro, perfect binding and short run case binding. An additional benefit will be the much smaller footprint of the machine compared to our existing kit.’

The Duplo iSaddle 2 system – with twin towers, four head stitching and three knife trimmer – was installed in December 2017.