Finishing machines are the steps after printing that a quote times on your own rates: die-cutting and stripping, folding and gluing cartons, flexo folder-gluing corrugated boxes, folding flyers and signatures, laminating. Add them on the Finishing tab of Equipment with Add finishing machine, from a preset or as a blank machine of a kind. Carton and corrugated box quotes use them directly, and a finishing operation in your price list can name one, so the operation is timed on the machine instead of priced per piece.
Kinds#
| Kind | What it does in a quote |
|---|---|
| Die-cutter | Cuts and creases printed sheets: a platen for cartons (with stripping and blanking), a rotary for corrugated. |
| Folder-gluer | Folds and glues carton blanks, for the glue styles you tick: straight line, crash-lock bottom, four or six corner. |
| Flexo folder-gluer (FFG) | Prints, slots, scores, folds and glues a corrugated box in one pass, with a number of print stations. |
| Folder | Folds flyers and signatures, with a speed factor per fold. |
| Laminator | Laminates by area (square metres per hour), with an adhesive cost and price per m². |
| Window patcher | Glues window film on carton blanks, at a speed by blank length. No box style has a window yet. |
| Other machine | Anything timed per piece: perforating, numbering, padding, drilling. |
You can already add a Saddle stitcher, Perfect binder, Coil binder, Wire-O binder, Three-knife trimmer or Label finisher. Quotes start using them with booklets and roll labels.
The first machine of a kind becomes the team default of that kind; Make default changes it. Archiving the default hands it to the next machine of the same kind.
How a step is timed#
Every machine uses the same step formula, worked backwards from the good pieces a job needs:
- Pieces in = good pieces × (1 + Run waste %), rounded up, + Setup waste (units).
- Time = Setup (min), or Changeover (min) when the same setup already ran in the job (the next signature of the same fold), + pieces in ÷ speed.
- Cost = time × Hourly cost + pieces in × Consumable cost per unit; price = time × Hourly rate + pieces in × Consumable price per unit, and at least the Minimum charge. Each step is rounded to the cent.
The Consumable names what the machine uses per piece (glue, wire, film). The Planning speed is in pieces per hour, or in metres per minute on folder-gluers, FFGs and label finishers (Speed unit). A speed in metres per minute becomes pieces per hour from each piece's length along the feed plus the Gap between pieces (mm), times the Efficiency.
Example (test rates, never defaults): a folder set up in 20 minutes, running 8,000 pieces an hour with 1 % run waste and 20 setup pieces, at $40 / $80 an hour and a $30 minimum, folds 1,000 flyers from 1,030 pieces in 1,663.5 seconds: cost $18.48, price $36.97. A folder-gluer at 150 m/min, 80 % efficiency and a 2 in gap runs 10.24 in blanks at about 23,168 an hour.
A machine without a planning speed can't be timed: quotes that need it say what is missing. With no waste set, the production card notes "No waste set" for staff.
Settings of each kind#
- Die-cutter: its type (platen or rotary, required), whether it strips and blanks, extra setup minutes for stripping, inline print stations, the smallest and largest sheet, and the trim per side of a made-to-size corrugated sheet.
- Folder-gluer: the glue styles it runs, each with optional setup minutes and a speed factor, and the smallest and largest blank. A box whose glue style isn't ticked can't be quoted on it.
- Flexo folder-gluer: print stations (required), extra setup minutes per colour, and sheet limits.
- Folder: a speed factor per fold (half, letter, Z, gate, double parallel, roll, accordion, 8, 16 and 32-page signatures).
- Window patcher: a table of pieces per hour by longest blank, which replaces the planning speed.
- Laminator: adhesive cost and price per m².
The settings page also has Machine (Name, Manufacturer, Model, Kind, Notes) and Costs. Changing the kind starts the new kind's settings afresh. The Test estimate panel shows pieces in, time, cost and price for a number of good pieces with the saved settings. Every setting is also in the API.
Speed factors#
A speed factor slows a machine down, and can add setup minutes, when a job is harder than usual: for example board thicker than 0.024 in on a folder-gluer runs at 0.8 × speed with 10 more setup minutes. Each factor names what it checks (caliper, blank length, pages, thickness, glue style or colours), a comparison, a value, the speed multiplier and the extra setup. Factors that apply multiply together. A factor whose fact the quote doesn't know is skipped.
Planning speed and rated maximum#
Presets carry what a machine is (its kind, glue styles, print stations, speed unit), never your costs, setup minutes, waste or speed. The planning speed stays empty: a maker's rated maximum, such as 450 m/min for a Bobst Expertfold, is shown beside it as a hint, because machines rarely run at it on real jobs. See The presets library.