Heidelberg Platen 13x18

Hi

I produce wedding stationery and want to be able to die cut items in house. I will need to be able to cut and crease (possibly perf) digitally printed sra3 sheets.

I am looking at the above platen as a machine to do this. My question is whether it is realistic to think that I can buy a machine like this and then be in a position to do this sort of work with a day or so of onsite training? how easy are these machines to use for cutting/creasing for a total beginner?

Thanks
Gary

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You could manage to produce die cut work that is easy enough if you you can alreadt operate one of these machines . If you have never operated a gt platen (13x18) i would advise you get someone spend a week wwith you and you scrounge some old dies to practice with .
A twenty up business card round cornering die cost about £130 , the cutting plate is about the same , i prefer to pack behind the die as i advise everyone to do , packing behind the cutting plate is limited to .002” more than that and you risk the grippers scraping the plate, a score in the plate renders it useless , wearing away the back of the gripper nneds no mention!
Patience is a must and discipline is very important , a sheet that flicks and bits fly everywhere must be left and no attempts to reach to clear the bits with the machine running not even from the top of the delivery pile !!!
These machines in a beginners hands are deadly ,we all fall for the machine nipping us once or twice , i have run and worked on these machines for over thirty years and have been smacked round the head more than once because i am quite tall , i had a nip from a rising and falling section of the feeder ,I was distracted for a split second as i was about to push the sheet feed button in ,I put a pointing finger beneath a part that come down like a hammer no real harm for me these have all been lucky escapes , many of the men i have worked with and some i still do have not had a second escape .
The heidelberg platens are in my opinion the best machine for the task yes the flick is going to give you grief but running slowly and with the occasional small nick in the right place on the cutter you can do all you need.
You must lern how to reverse this machine and teach all those around you how to do it too , you are advised to keep spare sheer pins or collars depending on the press you choose , on price i would recommend an A4 machine as weddding stationery standard size is worked on A4 . They are cheaper to buy and easier to find .Dies at A3 working sizes are horribly expensive compared to doubling the run on a smaller sheet and having a smaller die .
This is one of those posts that could never be answered fully , you have to be careful you dont over pack a cutter or you damage the jacket and die ,all shimming up must be very gradual until you learn and get the experience , it will take time ….. Maybe you would be most helped by going to see one of these being set up , just watch and keep quiet and a minder wont mind you get a look at what they do .

Peter

Thanks for your detailed response.

It sounds like these are pretty tricky machines to setup for a run. I need an A3 machine because what I will be mostly be cutting are large “wallet style” invitations, which occupy most of an SRA3 sheet. Each die will be a mixture of cuts and creases and possibly a perf. Are these typically done in a single pass or it is easier to run multiple passes for any reason?

Assuming I can acquire some level of competence setting the machine up (although pretty much universally people are saying this is difficult) the other difficult side to this is that the runs will be short (up to 200 sheets) because these are fully personalised wedding stationery runs. Therefore setup time is a big consideration because I might need to change the setup a few times for different orders. Is there a relatively quick way of maintaining the setup between runs, i.e. so I can quickly swap out one die for another without extensive setup each time. One plus side to this is that

1.) I only ever use two/three different boards all of around the same weight. So the media to be cut will not be changing massively between runs.

2.) The sheet size will always be SRA3.

3.) The cut on the sheet will always need to be in the same place (for each different job - of which I anticipate about 5/6 variations).

Thanks for your help with this.

Gary

Cuts, creases, and perfs are done all at once, normally. A heidelberg will do this. Read the manual, it can be found here http://www.briarpress.org/14558 How is the register on your digital press? On a heidelberg platen you only have a couple of points adjustment without having to move the form in the chase. A kluge would give you more leeway “chasing the register” of any printed piece whether it is from cutter draw or poor register from the printer. If you are only doing short runs of 200 maybe a handfeed C&P is a better choice for you, if you need to learn quickly. It would give you the same advantages of a kluge, but not require the same learning curve as an automatic kluge or heidelberg.

if digital press work is going to be die cut you usually add bleed of about 1/8” all around, that reduces the register chase , We always crease digital xmas cards allowing one sixteenth of overspill from the front to go over the rear of the crease avoiding unsightly white bars down the crease on the front of the card you would do the same with glue flaps and pockets . If you print down the spine of capacity folders you will need to allow for movement , some digital output work can vary by up to 1/8” . Even the heidelberg nexpress move around and backing up is all over the shot from the early nexpress models . A little home press may be even worse !!