Every printer says state of the art. Here’s the actual list.
Five machines, what each one is, and what it changes about your job. If a piece of kit doesn’t affect what you get, it isn’t on this page.
Five machines that decide what you can have.
All-digital, deliberately. We pulled offset off the floor — running both meant doing neither properly.
Konica Minolta AccurioJet KM-1
Ours was the second in Australia and — the bit we enjoy — the thirtieth built in the world. It takes a sheet up to 750 × 585mm at around 3,000 sheets an hour, and the speed doesn’t change with the stock.
“It’s downstairs, and it’s Serial Number 30, the 30th in the world, and it is in regional Victoria.” — Leon Wilson, Sprinter 2024
A sheet big enough to gang jobs that used to go offset. Colour that’s identical on sheet one and sheet one thousand. No plates, so a change of mind is a file change.
MGI JETvarnish 3DS + iFoil
Digital raised varnish and foil, installed in 2018. We were the first in Australia to run one alongside a KM-1, which is what lets the varnish register to the print properly.
“Small quantity embellishing is now not only an option but a cost-effective option.” — Leon Wilson, Print21 2018
Foil and raised varnish with no dies and no setup charge — which is what makes a fifty-copy embellished job viable at all.
The Futurecutter
Cutting, kiss-cutting, engraving, perforating and scoring — the only machine of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Leon went to Germany to meet its inventor and learn to service it.
“I think I am the only one in the Southern Hemisphere allowed to change the very expensive printheads myself.” — Leon Wilson, Sprinter 2024
Any shape without a die, and every sheet in a run able to be different.
Konica Minolta AccurioLabel 230
A digital label press with inline converting that laminates, die-cuts, strips the matrix and slits in a single pass.
Short-run labels on rolls, and variant sets without a setup charge per variant.
Horizon finishing
A four-clamp PUR perfect binder and an A4 landscape saddle stitcher, sitting directly after the press rather than across town.
Books and booklets bound properly, in-house, at quantities most binderies won’t take.
Offset. We decommissioned it.
A real decision, not a drift. What you get from it: no plates, no chemistry, no drying time, a first sheet that matches the thousandth, and a run of twenty-five that’s a real job rather than a favour.
“If you’ve got the smarts behind it you can make this machine absolutely sing.”
Leon Wilson · Sprinter, 2019