For more than 60 years, the company M-Druck in Ertingen / Germany stands for competence in print production. Founded in 1951 by Willy Metzger, his son Joachim Metzger has run the full-service print shop since 1985. The broad product range comprises among other activities the production of high-quality catalogues, brochures, newspaper supplements, books, posters, presentation folders, calendars and operator’s manuals from short runs to large volumes. Print enhancement is also a major issue. The customers are mainly located in the vicinity of the company.
“We have always offered our customers comprehensive advice because we want to show them what is possible. After all there are many little known applications that can be realized with a reasonable effort. This is confirmed by the positive feedback from our customers. With this feedback and our product range we have found our niche. Great emphasis is also placed on the fact that all departments at M-Druck employ qualified personnel. We have a pool of employees who have been with the company for many years and are therefore able to draw on their know-how“, underlines Joachim Metzger the cornerstones of his success whose basis is a fully equipped machine park. Besides a complete pre-press section, two printing machines, one of which for the format 70 x 100 cm, are used in the print room. For print finishing, M-Druck is equipped with two folding machines, a saddle stitcher, a gathering machine, a guillotine cutter as well as several small units for drilling, stitching and banding. Post-press processing is of great importance for the company, because in the course of these production steps high-quality printed products are created.
For some time, M-Druck has also produced mounting instructions for globally operating companies. The print runs vary from 200 to 500,000 copies in many versions. “For this reason we decided to add a fully automatic folder to our range of machines. With the prestigeFOLD NET 52 from MB Bäuerle, we have found the suitable machine concept“, explains Joachim Metzger the reason for this investment. The folding machine consists of two buckle fold units with a total of 10 fold plates. The system is supplemented by a mobile knife fold unit MS 45 and a small format vertical stacker SKM 36. A big advantage of this machine concept is its end-to-end automation. By entering the required information at the operator panel, the machine is set automatically from the feeder to the delivery section. 20 standard parallel and cross folds are permanently programmed. All other folds are freely programmable. More than 200 jobs can be saved and called up at a later date. “Because of the large variety of our orders as far as print runs and types of fold are concerned, short set-up times are important to counter the cost pressure. With the folding machine from MB Bäuerle, this is possible without restrictions even if for large volumes with 40,000 folds/h in the A4 format. Another important characteristic of the prestigeFOLD NET 52 is its sturdy construction, which makes the machine less susceptible to breakdowns. After all we will shortly celebrate a folding jubilee in the form of 100,000,000 folds“, explains Joachim Metzger the experience with the folding system.
The production of operator’s manuals must meet strict quality specifications. The fold discrepancies may not exceed one millimetre. „In all these years we did not have to reproduce one single batch, which means that we are able to fulfil the highest expectations of our customers. We owe this performance also to the prestigeFOLD NET 52. When a replacement investment is contemplated, we will again choose a folding machine from MB Bäuerle. This decision will probably we taken by my son Christopher, who is already waiting in the wings to take over the business”, looks Joachim Metzger into the future.
Christoph and Joachim Metzger and the machine operator Benjamin Maier (from the right) are enthusiastic about the fully automatic machine concept.
