Your Print Specialists customer Gate 7 have expanded their digital output with the recently created Mimaki Digital Suite. To complement this, finishing equipment from Italian manufacturer Flexa has just been installed. The Formula laminator and Miura II Plus XY cutter were installed by Your Print Specialists with Stefano from Flexa offering training and support.
Gate 7 produce high quality decals for the industrial automotive sector with Volvo, JCB and Caterpillar amongst their clients. Therefore finishing equipment that complemented the Mimaki Digital Suite was key. Gate 7 turned to YPS, their existing Mimaki supplier, to offer the solution. The Flexa range of equipment is a new addition to the Your Print Specialists rostra and we are excited to be able to offer this innovative range to Gate 7 and our customers. Manufactured in Italy, Flexa has various solutions available for digital finishing from laminators to roll cutters and banner welders.
Gate 7 are constantly evolving and looking at new processes and practices that can be implemented to improve their manufacturing workflow. The addition of Flexa finishing equipment will help to eliminate the bottleneck caused by the Mimaki expansion, taking current production times from a full day to under an hour.
The decals produced by Gate 7 are subject to heavy duty and harsh working environments so lamination is an important part of the finishing process. The Flexa Formula is a high volume laminator perfect for industrial application. Previously a manual process for Gate 7, the laminator will form an integral part of the workflow and increase production exponentially.
Following lamination, the roll is then cut in to sheets. Again, this was a manual process but is now taken care of by the Flexa Miura II Plus. The automatic xy cutter trims and cuts the roll in to sheets ready to go to the relevant department in production. Utilising registration cut marks, the Miura II Plus is equipped with an Edge Control system with optical sensor that reads the printed vertical line. This ensures maximum precision. The cutting blades can also be fine tuned allowing Gate 7 to maintain their high quality output throughout. Different size sheets can also be trimmed and output from the same roll due to the cutting mark reader.
As well as printed media, the Miura can also be used to sheet blank rolls of media into various sizes. This feature is particularly useful for Gate 7, who use sheets of coloured vinyls and reflective materials within their screen print production.
The full range of Flexa products can be viewed here. If you would like to discuss how Flexa could work for your business, please contact the team or on 0191 256 6889.