Company
Mutual Engraving
Long Island, NY

Profile
Based on Long Island, Mutual Engraving began offset printing just 15 years ago. Though offset now makes up most of its business, traditional engraving is still a significant part of its focus on top-of-the-line printing. Offset cannot quite match the quality and delicate feel of engraved printing. Until the recent installation of a Printware PlateStream platesetter, offset plates were made with film from an imagesetter to burn metal plates. Now, virtually all of the jobs are specified digitally, and the great majority of offset plates are produced via CTP.

To fulfill the 200 to 400 orders that come into Mutual Engraving every day, nearly 100 presses are housed into its 40,000 square-foot facility. Most of the presses are two-color; thermographycapable, duplicator-style presses, although the company also has a web press and a number of engraving presses. As the company has grown, it has taken over more space in several buildings on the block it occupies.

Co-existing with its ultra-modern CTP/Internet workflow are the circa 1920s engraving pantographs; operators run QuarkXPress on Macintoshs down the hall from craftsmen who still hand-finish engraving plates. “I hope engraving never dies,” confides Mallon, ever conscious of Mutual’s long heritage.

Mutual Engraving keeps an inventory of fine papers and pre-printed shells for most clients, so only the variable information needs to be printed on short turnaround. They do much of their printing on premium, cotton-based stocks.

More and more of Mutual Engraving’s customers were demanding the fast turnaround and ease-of-use inherent in CTP and Web integration. Mallon notes that as customers and print buyers become better informed, they ask for computer-toplate. “We were surprised to find that CTP sells with many customers. Aside from the specific benefits of faster turnaround and higher quality, many customers prefer to deal with a printer that is willing to invest in state-of-the-art equipment.”

After an extensive study of CTP options, Mallon selected the Printware PlateStream. “The PlateStream was the only machine of its type with an integrated punch,” Mallon says. “That means one less step for us and, more importantly, accurate punching saves us press time.”

Mallon also notes that the PlateStream provides far more flexibility in handling various types of silver-halide media than other platesetters. “We could choose the plate material that worked best on our presses without having to worry about whether it would run through the platesetter.”

After the system was installed, most new orders went immediately to CTP, while existing setups stayed on the film-based workflow. “With our type of work, each customer setup might be different, but customers use those setups over and over. New jobs had to be laid out and set up anyway; it was just as easy to set them up for CTP from the outset,” she reveals.

The Vision
Customers specify printing from their desks. A PDF file is created from the information provided by the customer. Once approved, the same PDF is sent to a platesetter, which instantly makes a plate. Up-to-the minute job status is posted on the Web for clients to check.

Making this futuristic vision a reality are the third generation employees of Mutual Engraving, led by Vice President Janet Mallon and Prepress Manager Rich Forelli. Needless to say, their grandparents, who founded the company during the depression, would not recognize the company today.

Mutual Engraving’s blue-chip customer list includes Citibank, ABC, KPMG and the New York Rangers hockey team. With computer-to-plate (CTP), such process steps as film making, stripping and pasteup are eliminated, and the system is fast enough to turn orders around in just a few days. And with Internet job specification, individuals order their own materials with the system handling approvals, relieving customers of administrative tasks. The customer approves the exact file that is used to create the plate, so traditional proofing is not required.

Integrating CTP
The company ramped their CTP usage from 25 percent CTP to over 80 percent, retaining film and metal plates for unusual jobs such as long-run letterhead. Letterhead and other products are printed one-up on 11 x 18-inch plates and most business cards are printed 12-up. They use Silver Halide 0.008 inch-thick digital polyester plate material.

The Internet job specification infrastructure was also rolled out gradually, allowing any bugs to be worked out before adding the next level of complexity. At first, Internet-specified jobs were manually entered into the system and manually typeset. The second phase was to use the customer- provided data directly without retypesetting. The final phase was the integration of the company’s internal job-tracking system to make up-to-the-minute job status available to customers via the Web.

The third generation has certainly left its mark on Mutual Engraving. And they expect to continue their leadership in printing technology for generations to come.