David Culver’s credo is “You are only as good as your satisfied customers.” The president of Parlor City Paper Box in Binghamton NY, Culver – who began with the company in 1957, took ownership of the packaging printer in the early 1980s, and was joined by his sons Bruce, Brian and Jeffrey in the 1990s – has carved out a niche supplying clients in the Northeast with high-end, premium cartons.
Originally formed as a set up box company in 1902, Parlor City Paper Box Company has evolved into a service oriented folding carton operation that has built customer loyalty by continually investing in new equipment that insures responsiveness and a quality product
The firm recently completed a 22,000 sq ft addition to its 136,000 sq ft facility while augmenting its capabilities at the beginning of 2007 with a KBA printing press and a Maxson dual knife rotary sheeter.
“This is our second KBA sheetfed press,” says David Culver. “Our first Rapida 104 41-inch sheetfed press was a four-color model. We’ve installed a second press to help us increase our volume and give us additional color capabilities, since a majority of our work is six to seven colors. We’ve also had the press prepared for hybrid UV capabilities since we may need that capability in the future.”
With the new printing press, Parlor City maintains its quality standards while significantly reducing down time, achieving greater out put and servicing Customers quicker. With a vast amount of its jobs being specified at 5,000 to 10,000 sheets, the automation on the new press has helped to turn the short-run jobs around faster.
Another piece of equipment that was acquired to improve quality, reduce cost and speed throughput was a dual knife rotary sheeter. “We used an inline sheeter that was taken from a web press and had it converted to off line use. It wasn’t very accurate, it was slow, and the cut quality was nothing to write home about”, recalls Bruce Culver, one of three sons in the family owned business. Recalling that Parlor City had to rely on outside sources for most of its sheeted stock, Culver commented, “With mills raising the price of sheeted stock and deliveries being extended, it seemed the right time to upgrade this part of the operation.”
The Culvers selected the Maxson MDH Sheeter, a dual knife rotary cutter outfitted with a dual position unwind, a decurler, a slitting rig and the ability to deliver skids of sheets directly to the presses. “Maxson’s name has been out in the market for a long time.” observed David Culver. “People in the Industry spoke very highly of them.”
Bruce Culver noted advantages of the Maxson Sheeter over the existing unit.
“The dual position roll stand allows the Operator to chuck a roll and lift it into position while the other unwind is in use. Roll changes take a couple of minutes. The automatic tension control reduces the brake pressure as the roll unwinds without the Operator involved.”
“The decurling device uses different diameter breaker rolls that allow us to remove the curl on board between 0.010” and 0.036” thick without damaging the coated surface. We’ve been able to reduce waste at the end of the roll by treating the web to get a flat sheet.”
The air loaded slitter rig divides the full width web into two streams ahead of the cutter section producing two piles of sheet side by side. Bruce Culver notes, “The benefit of the slitter section is that we have doubled our sheet production. Now we are not limited by the sheeter’s capacity.”
The cutter section’s rotary dual knife design was a significant upgrade over the existing stationary bed knife model that was being used. ”We enjoy a cleaner cut sheet that is square and accurate.” comments Bruce. “And it’s much quieter in operation even though it runs faster than the old sheeter”, adds his father.
All and all,” Bruce summarized, “the sheeter is running pretty much as we expected. Increased tonnage. Better quality. Good, flat sheets. High speed. I will say that the ease of operation has been a surprise. The Operator has commented how much easier this sheeter is to run than the old one. Set up is pretty simple.”
Concludes David Culver, “Our policy is to invest in new equipment to remain competitive. This is the latest step to upgrade our operation. As we work with our customers to get more business, we need to commit to them that we will have the capacity to handle it. We try our darnedest to keep everyone happy and the results have been continuous growth.”
With those kind of results, there is no arguing with this packaging printer’s strategy as it gets its fair share of the market.
