The £1.4m-turnover business installed its new 3.2x1.6m DYSS X7 digital cutting table - supplied by UK distributor AG/CAD - last month and is due to take delivery of its HP Scitex FB7600 in January 2015.
Russell Murch, managing director of Pure POS, said: "We're moving away from a traditional litho laminate and screen print workflow and into digital in a big way - this is going to completely change our print and finishing capability."
The firm's new cutting table is a replacement for an existing KM626A, which was sufficient for knife cutting and creasing cardboard freestanding display units (FSDU), in-store POS and window displays but lacked the ability to handle thicker substrates.
Pure POS sales director Liam Gibbs said that this had become an issue as the firm's reputation for quality POS led to a requirement for it to design and produce semi-permanent and permanent POS displays.
"Historically we've cut cardboard, thin foamex and displayboard, but as we have moved into the semi and permanent display sector, we are cutting dibond, acrylic, wood, aluminium and thick foamex (up to 20mm)."
The limitations of Pure's existing knife cutter meant that it was having to subcontract around £20,000 per annum to external suppliers, which it has now been able to bring in-house.
Murch added that the new cutter had also slashed the amount the company spends on external die-formes by two-thirds, as it is able to cut jobs more economically on the DYSS cutting table.
"Our average tooling cost was around £200-£250 per tool and we're running the digital cutting table with apprentices, so the amount of hours we can go before it becomes cheaper to buy a tool is quite high," he said.
"Our die-cutter runs at 300 sheets/hour whereas the DYSS might only run 30, but it takes two days to get the tool made for the die-cutter and it's very difficult to alter if you find you want to adjust a crease to make it easier to assemble.
"With the DYSS we just go straight back and adjust the file and the change will apply to every sheet from that point on. I've been looking at digital cutters for the past five years but it's only in the last 12 months or so that they've become a viable alternative."
Pure's finishing efficiency has also been given a boost by a custom modification to the DYSS X7 done by AG/CAD (at the printer's request) that enables the rear sheet feeder to handle three sheets simultaneously rather than the standard two.
"We do a lot of 60x40 sheets so the fact we can mount three at a time saves a lot of operator time, loading and unloading," said Murch. "You can load it with six sheets, walk off for 10 minutes and then come back and load it with three more."
Murch added that the firm would probably take a second DYSS cutting table in 2015 on the back of the HP Scitex FB7600 install. "We'll probably go for a second machine without the optional router, because it has a lighter head and can run faster," he said.
