Minuteman Press complete their production portfolio with Trotec laser Q500 and become faster, more flexible and more efficient.

Based in Bath, Minuteman Press has specialised in supplying high-quality printed products to customers for 24 years. Beginning life as a small print and copy shop in central Bath, the business has grown over the years to become a market leader in its field having recently invested over £1 million on a move to a commercial unit in central Bath.

• Application: Production of print materials, signs, other laser materials
• Location: Bath, United Kingdom
• Laser Machine: Q500 dual source

Print excellence since 1998.

As a customer-centric business, Minuteman Press prides itself on its creativity and the value offered to customers with a passionate team dedicated to delivering the very best quality and standards throughout the print and finishing stages. The process isn’t a simple production job, the team at Minuteman Press work with clients to enhance their ideas, add value to the end product while providing an honest and fair price for the service.

Bringing laser work in house.

With the slogan “We design, Print & Promote… You!”, Minuteman Press offer a comprehensive service including print, design and signage, with products ranging from greeting cards, wall planners and flyers to exhibition displays, shop fronts and vehicle graphics.

Minuteman Press prides itself on delivering the best possible results to customers in the shortest lead times. Before introducing the laser,  the team already used a wide selection of different technologies, including a range of printers and a mechanical flatbed cutter with a camera system. These technologies allowed Minuteman Press to offer a comprehensive service, however, some work, like pre-cutting acrylic, had to be outsourced or bought in from other suppliers. The cost was not significant, but meant that lower margins were made on projects and lead times could be affected.

To improve this circumstance, Minuteman Press first discussed investing in its own laser cutter as early as 2019. In 2022, the final decision was made to bring laser production in-house. The Sign and Digital show proved to be the perfect venue for Minuteman Press to explore laser production as there were four manufacturers at the show, including Trotec Laser. On the Trotec stand, David Ghent, Managing Director, and Kieran Blacknall, Visual Communications Manager, saw the Q500 Dual Source laser cutter in action. In a detailed discussion with one of the Trotec experts, they received comprehensive information and recommendations on the subject of laser processing. Kieran booked a demonstration at the Trotec showroom near Bristol the following week, testing a wide variety of materials on the Q500. Impressed with the versatility and quality of the machine, Minuteman Press invested in a Q500 Dual Source, which was installed in June 2022.

“The Q500 is an excellent addition to our workflow, giving us a new dimension to processing and allowing us to offer a comprehensive range of options for clients. We’re always looking for ways to add value to our portfolio by investing in the best technology and equipment, and we are excited by the possibilities offered by the Q500 and where it will take the business.”

Kieran Blacknall, Visual Communications Manager

A new string to the production bow.

The Q500 has added a new dimension to Minuteman’s processing and has opened up new ways to bring customer projects to life, with all products now being created in-house by the team. The Q500 and the mechanical cutting plotter are selected for jobs based on the application suitability. Whilst laser cutting is not suitable for processing materials containing PVC, it can process a wealth of substrates not possible with the plotter, including acrylics. The accuracy of the laser means that labels and stickers can be kiss cut, which is also not possible with the plotter.

To complete the range of laser services, Minuteman Press Bath purchased the add-on Trotec Vision Print & Cut camera system. This system enables printed materials with registration marks to be processed accurately, providing an efficient workflow and negating the need for manual alignment of jobs. .
Minuteman uses the Q500 to process a range of materials, including creating signage with Trotec’s TroLase laminates and incorporating LaserLeather into projects, with textiles being a completely new venture for the team.

For Minuteman Press Bath, the addition of the Q500 laser cutter means not only a full range of new applications – but also – with all work now produced in-house – complete control over project timings and quality.

“Trotec materials are excellent quality and allow us to offer something new to our range. Alongside TroLase signage, we have also processed multiple LaserLeather jobs, which, never having processed textiles before, was an exciting project for us to undertake. We’re also seeing lots of demand for printed acrylic signage and we’ve come up with a great workflow to produce this as a very high-quality product in-house with TroGlass.”

Kieran Blacknall, Visual Communications Manager

There are many different files types that desktop publishing software can create. Here is a bit of information about the most common.

PDF (Portable Document Format)

PDF is the industry standard for digital document transfers and printing. PDF files can be used reliably, regardless of software, hardware or operating system. PDF documents are fixed scale, so the documents open the same everywhere. This is our preferred file format.

JPEG ( Joint Photographic Experts Group)

JPEG is a lossy compression format for images. Most images and photographs are in JPEG format, generally this format provides a much smaller file size than the alternatives. Because of the smaller file size, there is usually a loss of data.

TIF (Tagged Image File)

TIF is an uncompressed file format used for high quality graphics and images. TIF files hold more data than most other alternatives, however the option to compress is usually available on export. Because of the data retention of TIF, file sizes are expected to be larger.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

PNG is a raster graphics file format and is the most widely used lossless image format on the Internet. PNG has the ability to compress and uncompress images without reduction in quality. As PNG is raster based, it’s important to ensure files are created at the correct DPI.

EPS (Encapsulated Postscript)

EPS is a vector graphic file format used for creating scalable artwork. EPS files can be opened and edited within Adobe Illustrator at any time, which makes them perfect for creating logos, cut paths, and anything else that may require changes at a later date, or across different operating systems.

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)

SVG is the file format used for creating cut paths for our Valiani and laser cutter. Cut paths can be created in Illustrator along with artwork, and then exported in the SVG format.

LDF (Large Document Format)

LDF is used in Photoshop for files larger than the standard PSD. LDF supports documents up to 300,000 pixels in any direction, making it ideal for saving large images – such as billboards or banners.

RAW (RAW Data)

RAW files are used in photography to produce the highest possible quality images from a DSLR. Most cameras give the option to use JPEG or RAW, but due to the lossy compression of JPEG, RAW can be used to retain additional image data that would otherwise be lost.

Other Files Types

There are lots of different file types, each with potential variations due to operating system, program version, export settings and final usage.

If you’re unsure about your file type and it is not listed here, do give us a call to see if we can use it. Usually a small conversion process can solve most file format problems, but we do occasionally find one that stumps us.

For more information on file types and whether we can use them contact us.