ICMA member Placard Pty. Ltd. of Melbourne, Australia
has as its core business the manufacturing and personalization of plastic
cards. Despite Australia's small population (just over 19 million people
), the market is highly segmented, resulting in small production runs
and a demand for high quality output.
Ion deposition not the answer
In common with many card manufacturers around the
world, Placard used the ICMA member Datacard's Ultraform / ion deposition
combination to personalize card carriers and letterheads. Unfortunately
they quickly found out that the ion deposition print quality was not
acceptable to a large percentage of Placard's customers. As Placard's
Operations Manager Richard Hamilton observed, "Laser quality imaging
was still elusive, but our customers, particularly those experienced
in personalized direct mail, expected laser quality as a standard. We
had the additional problem of being restricted to a small number of
specific paper stocks that would run satisfactorily using the sensitive
ion deposition technology. For customers whose house style called for
a specialty stock, we were forced to manually affix plastic cards to
stationery that was laser printed off-line. This clearly wasn't a cost
effective solution."
Small business, small budget
Although a leading player in the Australian plastic
card market, Placard was not in a position to support expensive engineering
consultation or the capital outlay of a major equipment upgrade. Placard's
own engineers perform maintenance servicing in their manufacturing bureau
and it was this team that finally solved the print quality problem.
Placard's engineers had tried a number of different laser printers in
tandem with the Ultraform line, but none satisfactorily presented the
printed work for processing. The solution lay in a paper-handling device
that acts as an interface between the laser printer and the Ultraform.
A prototype was built in-house and after many months of trials and refinements,
the device became an integral part of Placard's production line.
One year after introducing the paper-handling device
Richard Hamilton says, "It has become
absolutely indispensable to the day-to-day operation of our business.
More importantly, our customers get the desired print quality at no
additional cost."
Some significant benefits
The obvious outcome of Placard's ingenuity is the
ability to laser print on line. But this simple device brought with
it many other benefits: