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How Do I Choose the Right Bursting Machine for My Print Shop?
How do I choose the right bursting machine for my shop?
In this series of posts, “How do I choose?”, we will help you take a little of the guesswork out of selecting the best print finish product for your shop or office. It’s sometimes difficult to find the right machine to fit your needs when there are so many models.
An industrial grade form burster is essential to print shops who specialize in mailing or mail houses that have added digital printing to the mix. The ability to take on accounts with customers who do high-volume invoicing, grade reporting, or other applications where multiple forms are printed on one page.
First, know what your forms are printed on – cut sheet or tractor-feed paper? This is obvious, but knowing your limitations with the type of sheet you print on, could prompt you to make some other changes. Cut sheet forms have some flexibility in what type of machine they’re printed on in the first place, but you’ll find fewer errors in pagination and more options in burster machines for tractor-feed forms. For example, Lloyd’s has two table-top, and one high-volume cut sheet burster, but ten varieties of tractor-feed models.
The next crucial step in your comparison would be the speed at which your burster will operate. In the tractor feed category, the Low-Volume Series of Formax Bursters processes at speeds of 0 to 200 feet per minute. The Medium-Volume Series processes at speeds of 15 to 350 feet per minute and is capable of handling forms up to 17” long. The High-Volume Series operates at speeds up to 500 feet per minute. Your shops capacity for big jobs and happy customers is only limited by how much you can run efficiently in a day.
Also, consider the flexibility of you need in a machine. Do you need the ability to accommodate a longer form length? Do you need an imprinter add-on? A counter for audit purposes? Don’t just think about the here and now. Your business is growing. Giving your sales reps the more options to sell in the market place will keep your machines running more often and the profits will be … bursting your expectations.
If you have questions about the capability of any of Lloyd’s bursting machine models, feel free to contact us.
How Do I Choose the Right Document Inserter for My Office?
In this series of posts, “How do I choose?”, we will help you take a little of the guesswork out of selecting the best print finish product for your shop or office. It’s sometimes difficult to find the right machine to fit your needs when there are so many models.
It’s one thing to upgrade the speed and efficiency of your office by choosing the right folding machine, but you can take invoices and other direct mail to a new level of automation with a document inserter. Because you’ll be investing significantly more on an inserter than you would a simple folding machine, it’s important that you weigh the benefits of each tier of functionality.
More than speed, which varies slightly between models, document inserters are primarily distinguished by the number of items that may be inserted into mailing envelopes. When shopping, you may consider that at this time you only ever insert an invoice, a form letter and a return envelope into 90% of your mailings. In that case, the Formax 6202 is a perfect machine for your operation.
However, you must consider growth in your business, change in operating procedures, and things as simple as the two-page invoices that make up only 10% of your mailings take all afternoon for two staff members. What is the opportunity cost there? What’s the phrase about being as strong as your weakest link? Don’t let a little bit of underused functionality get in the way of what could be a fully automated process.
Then, consider what your office could do with an even more advanced inserter. A new strategy with direct mail may add a significant line of revenue to your budget. What value could you add to your customers? To your employees?
Answer these questions and shop Lloyd’s for the best deal on document inserters. The models we carry all have warranties and are virtually maintenance free.
How Do I Choose the Right Shredder for My Office?
In this series of posts, “How do I choose?”, we will help you take a little of the guesswork out of selecting the best print finish product for your shop or office. It’s sometimes difficult to find the right machine to fit your needs when there are so many models.
“We live in the digital age. The paperless corporation is upon us…” Yeah, I’ve heard that for a few years. There are still stacks of invoices, printed emails, memos, notifications from human resources, and project files ALL over my office. We live in the digital age, that’s true, but we also live in the age of HIPPA regulations, corporate espionage, invasive audits, and big brother. There’s simply a lot on paper that needs to be destroyed before the wrong person sees it.
But, which paper shredder should I get for the office? Does it matter that there are 50 employees on this floor? Or that bank account numbers are often on the forms that I shred? What about those boxes of old accounting files in the basement we plan on having the intern take care of?
Choosing a shredder is all about quantity and level of security. A strip-cut shredder like the Formax FD8600 will accept your feed quickly, but it won’t be as secure and the container will fill up quickly. Cross-cut models like the Formax FD8500 will chop up your documents into a fine dust, but they simply take longer because they’re working harder. Consider that feed speed. When there’s a lot of archives to shred, you don’t want to feed your machine ten sheets at a time. You don’t want your employees spending all day away from their desk.
Then look at the extras. These days we don’t just need to destroy paper. Consider a shredder with the ability to shred compact discs, credit cards and the occasional file that still has a paper clip attached. You want a shredder with the ability to do that without damaging the blades, auto cleaning and reverse functions are important features to include.
Lloyd’s carries a line of Formax Office Shredders that each have great features and come in both strip-cut and cross-cut models. They all have a warranty on the cutting blades and can accept a varying number of pages. Use the compare feature in the list view to find the shredder for your office. The garbage disposal in the break room is just not going to work anymore.
How Do I Choose the Right Corner Rounder for My Print Shop?
In this series of posts, “How do I choose?”, we will help you take a little of the guesswork out of selecting the best print finish product for your shop or office. It’s sometimes difficult to find the right machine to fit your needs when there are so many models.
For example, Lloyd’s has nine different round corner machines. There are options and add-ons for some, and others are simply manual. In each purchase you make, you should consider the following as it relates to your business’s operation.
Corner rounders are pretty simple machines. They basically make measured cuts on the corner of your printed sheets. This finishing method has always been popular, but more-so in recent years as print products mimic the style of online communications. It’s not often that you see an icon or a photo online with squared-off corners.
So, let’s look at application first. Are you printing posters or business cards? Are you printing on heavy or standard stock? The size alone may rule out a manual table-top rounder, so be sure to look at the table dimensions. And, heavy stock may require the power an automatic can provide – which also puts you over $1,000. If you’d like the option to cut through metal for signage production, you’ll need a specific machine.
For rounders I think quantity and speed necessary can be measured by the capacity of sheets you can feed the machine at one time (in inches). A rounder in the hobby category may only accept a few sheets at a time with a .04″ clearance, but commercial medium and heavy-duty rounders will allow an inch or more to be cut. Thicker cut, means you’ll be moving through projects faster. Do you think your capacity will grow or remain the same? Choose a model for 2 years down the road, rather than one you need today, because your needs will hopefully grow once you add this machine.
The frequency of your use will require replacement cutting dies, so the availability and cost of these parts should also be a consideration. You’ll also want to investigate the variety of blade sizes and designs available for a particular model as well. A wide variety of cutting options will also add to your flexibility and options for the customer.
Finally, consider maintenance. All Lloyd’s corner rounders come with a year warranty, but looking beyond this time frame consider your potential frequency of use and the availability of replacement parts.
To check out Lloyd’s selection of corner rounders and compare models, visit our website.
Why Your Medical Billing Practice Needs a Folding Machine and Inserter
It’s a highly specialized office. The medical billing practice handles all billing for doctors’ offices, freeing them up to continue to practice medicine. But the medical billing office ends up doing a lot of folding bills and stuffing envelopes.
For smaller practices, you may only have 100 bills a day, but larger practices can get a few hundred bills a day. And for smaller practices to become bigger practices, they need to be able to grow through increased production.
This is where automating your mailing process can really help. With a small folder, like the 87M Manual Tabletop Folder or the 207M Manual Tabletop Folder, or even the Formax FD 320 Automatic Tabletop Folder. These folders can take your bills and fold them into C-folds, Z-folds, or any other kind of letter fold. And with the bigger folders, you can hit speeds of 11,000 pieces per hour.
Or you can even take a step up and try the Formax FD 6100 Inserter, which will fold and insert your bills into their envelopes.
Now, by upgrading to an automated solution, you’ve opened up the possibility to take on new clients, and grow as you can handle new and bigger practices.