Top Bloggers Rights this month go to 'Jörg Scheffler, CEO of Motioncutter',



One of his blogs, “Digital Print Demands Digital Finishing” has been showcased on Quick Print Pro's Best Blogs In Print website.

The stats add up to Jörg Scheffler being awarded the print industry top blogger of the month accolade.

Digital Print Demands Digital Finishing

I never set out to build finishing equipment. I’m a printer by trade and printing is what we did for years at THEMEDIAHOUSE, but as our digitally printed direct mail offering grew, I was disappointed when researching finishing options. Digital print was advancing quickly and preprint technology was keeping pace, but no cutting equipment out there seemed to offer the flexibility and agility that digital print providers need to reap the full benefits of digital print from start to finish. It seemed such a missed opportunity when there’s so much potential for finishing to be one of the steps that really enhances a piece of print. 

As printers, we want to be able to say yes to our customers. But even more important than that, we want to show them how much more print can do with the data they have. Never mind variable data printing, I wanted the ability to offer my customers variable data finishing. It just didn’t exist yet, so we built it ourselves and Motioncutter was born.

Finishing is the final frontier for futurisation

The frustration I was feeling back in the early 2010s is something a lot of print businesses are still experiencing today. Maybe even more so. The cutting technologies they have just don’t allow enough flexibility to match the small volumes, customisation and personalisation that their digital print offering is so perfect for.

Demand has changed and whatever size a print business is, the shift towards shorter runs, faster turnaround times and more frequent version changes is inescapable. Print orders fly from web-to-print portals through highly automated prepress setups and straight into high-speed digital presses, but once they’re printed, it’s as if time has stopped and they’re right back to the pre-digital era. 

There are manual steps throughout many finishing departments. Cutting over here, creasing and perforation over there. Die-cutting in a different room because it’s the only place they could squeeze a machine in when the finishing department outgrew its original footprint. In that sort of environment, multiple operators spend hours moving jobs from step to step, handfeeding and checking on multiple different machines, all the while checking to make sure that small batches and personalised items haven’t been mixed up, and that every item is finished as it should be. 



Not only is this hugely time-consuming and wasteful with every manual touchpoint cropping the profit margin, but as the number of jobs climbs and the volumes of those jobs fall, the margin for error grows. And as we all know, every error comes with two costs - the financial one and the one that impacts the customer relationship. In most cases, neither is something that print businesses operating on tight margins can afford. 


Single pass laser cutting eliminates the bottlenecks
Demand for more creative finishing is on the rise as brand owners look for ways to increase the tactile appeal of the print they buy. They’re looking for the sort of affects you can achieve with structural cutting, creasing, micro-perforation and engraving, but they want this to be combined with individualisation. And they want it without long lead times. 

Continued here: https://www.bestblogsinprint.co.uk/blog/digital-print-demands-digital-finishing