What would I require?

[Roy DSilva]

Hi!

I am Roy D'Silva from Mumbai, India. I plan to start a small printing outfit and was wondering what machines I would need in the long run. After two months of cold calling and getting print jobs, I did some research, and I am guessing these are the machines I will require.

Spiral
Card Cutter
Rotary Cutter
Lamination Machine
Creasing Machine
Paper Rim Cutter
Perforation Machine
Sticker Cutting Plotter
Thermal Lamination
Multi Color Digital Machine
Digital Duplicator (Mini-Offset)
Flex Printing Machine

I have no business plan rn; that depends on where I set up the shop (I plan to rent/buy, whatever is feasible); logic tells me that I will get ROI on these machines only if I try hard to tap the B2B market.

Please advise.

TIA!

 

[jwheeler]

I would just start off with a full color digital press with the following in-line finishing: booklet maker, hole puncher, and stapler. For offline finishing, you'll need a programmable guillotine cutter, a folder, and a slitter/cutter/creaser. All of this will handle a large majority of the work most print shops do. It would help to have a coil and/or comb binding machine too. Outsource everything else and keep track of which types of jobs you're getting the most of. Then buy equipment to meet those needs.

You can avoid lamination by printing on synthetic material most of the time (unless you're running book covers). Don't get the digital duplicator unless you find you're going to be doing alot of monochrome work such as NCR forms.

 

[Roy DSilva]

I would just start off with a full color digital press with the following in-line finishing: booklet maker, hole puncher, and stapler. For offline finishing, you'll need a programmable guillotine cutter, a folder, and a slitter/cutter/creaser. All of this will handle a large majority of the work most print shops do. It would help to have a coil and/or comb binding machine too. Outsource everything else and keep track of which types of jobs you're getting the most of. Then buy equipment to meet those needs.

You can avoid lamination by printing on synthetic material most of the time (unless you're running book covers). Don't get the digital duplicator unless you find you're going to be doing alot of monochrome work such as NCR forms.

Thanks for your reply! Would help if you could point me to a link to a full color digital press link?

 

[jwheeler]

I'd start with any of the big names like Konica Minolta, Ricoh, Fuji, Canon, etc.