Its latest £1m investment was spread over 18 months and saw it expand into an adjacent unit on the modern Rackheath industrial estate, giving it enough space to add a modern and highly productive Kongsberg C64 Edge 3.2m digital cutting table.
The company currently has 25 staff and a turnover of £2m. It serves a range of industries, including retail, hospitality, leisure, tourism, construction and education.
The new Kongsberg is being used for projects including creative 3D corrugated cardboard designs, packaging, displays, signage, labels, and decals. It’s running alongside the company’s SwissQprint Nyala 4 3.2m flatbed/roll inkjet printer, installed in 2022.
The Kongsberg replaced a 10-year-old Blackman & White finishing table, although that has been kept as a backup. “Our investment is not merely about acquiring cutting-edge technology; it’s a commitment to enhancing our service,” says managing director Mark Baker. “The speed and precision contribute to reduced lead times.”
CIM was founded in 2000, he explains. “We started as three old friends, one unfortunately passed away after a heart attack and the other, still a great friend of mine, left after four years to pursue a future in restaurants. CIM was always a signmaker, with the thought we would go into wide-format and possibly marketing, but marketing never became our thing.
“We started with our small team of three and grew organically with the demand – we are always one person away from the right number, so it’s ever-growing! We set up to offer great service, fair price but also to ensure customers knew the options and opportunities to spend what was right for themselves. We championed listening, giving advice and options – a posh phrase may be ‘consultants’, but we wanted people to leave us talking about a great experience, rather than just ‘how cheap can we do it?’”
CIM stands for Creative Image Management. However, says Baker, it “was always abbreviated as it was a mouthful when answering the phone!”
“Today,” he says, “we mainly work for Norfolk-based companies in the East Anglia region, but we do have some further afield and travel anywhere as trusted partners for many of our customers.”
For its first eight years, CIM occupied a small windowless starter unit, but in 2008 it commissioned a purpose-built unit with plenty of natural light, when it also got its first flatbed printer. It added an adjacent unit as it expanded (as well as another unit on the estate for vehicle work), then most recently the large unit behind became available so CIM bought that too. The new unit added another 500sqm to the existing 480sqm.
“At the start of this year we moved all the machinery in to the new unit to create a circular production workflow,” says Baker. “It’s made deliveries, printing, cutting, finishing and goods out all flow so much better – we now feel like a real production facility rather than a rabbit warren and the team is on one site as the units all link.”
The main printing equipment includes a Canon Colorado roll-fed UVgel inkjet printer, an Epson SureColor roll-fed inkjet and the SwissQprint Nyala 4 flatbed/roll hybrid inkjet. Finishing is handled by the new Kongsberg cutting table, the older 1.6m Blackman & White table, Summa and Mimaki cutters, a laser cutter, a recently purchased sewing machine for banners, a laminator and a RollsRoller applicator.
What’s a Kongsberg C64 Edge?
The C64 is the largest in Kongsberg’s C Edge family of four cutting tables, optimised for sign and corrugated production. It takes sheet media up to 3.2x3.2m and cuts with a maximum speed of 75m/minute, with head acceleration up to 1G. Edge models can also be field-upgraded to the full C specification (100m/minute and 1.7G).
The machine’s bed is aluminium composite, the traverse beam is carbon composite, the head drive is rack and pinion and there is camera mapping and registration, with multi-zone and multi-sheet/roll operations. CIM chose the media conveyor and routing options. Other options include a dual tool head and automated loading including robotics.
Why choose it?
“The Blackman & White is a 1.6m-wide conveyorized table – it was great, but we wanted 3.2m so we could cut any size sheet, or many sheets sideways for speed and dual loading; and banners and wallpaper textiles that we can now cut by machine rather than hand,” says Baker.
“The Kongsberg was the right size, great technology, easy tool change, really attentive sales team, the conveyor, the tools available especially the vari-angle blade.”
Did he look at anything else? “Yes – we just felt Kongsberg wanted us to have a machine so much more, and the technology and tooling seemed to be right up there with what we were after.”
How did the adoption go?
CIM bought the new table directly from Kongsberg, which performed the installation. “It was installed in March-April time and Kongsberg trained our team,” says Baker. “Really knowledgeable and practical people.”
What does the operator think?
The Kongsberg has one main operator, Aaron Maher, with two backups trained for when he isn’t there. Maher says: “I would say it works as promised and as it was advertised to us. It’s faster and more precise. I’m now able to knife-cut more complicated shapes for jobs and at a faster speed. Tool changing is easy and reasonably quick to change on the fly – just two screws to bolt a new tool in. Some of the heavier tools can sometimes be a little tricky to offer up to the machine straight so the pins line up.
“The ability for the camera to read the edge of a sheet and show me on screen how close I can get a cutter to the edge is extremely useful for saving space on sheets. The response time for the most part is pretty good, though sometimes jobs with a lot on a sheet take a few moments for it to work out what it’s going to do before it starts cutting. Sometimes if you’re a bit too fast on pressing buttons it can get a bit confused.
“The multi-zone speeds up Correx and bulk jobs. Now if I have a pallet’s worth of a job and it’s the same cut file, I can load two sheets at the same time and while one is cutting, I can be taking off and putting on the next sheet. There is essentially no downtime at all when using this feature, making a pallet of work take no time.
“I have run five or six different cutting tables now in my working life. All different brands at different ends of the scale from more hobbyist ones to high performance industrial machines. I would say the Kongsberg is one of the better ones if not the best one I have used so far.”
Any problems?
“We had a problem with the belt but after a few back-and-forth emails to rule out anything else, there was a fast turnaround to correct it,” says Maher. “There have been other minor faults, but customer support seems to be quick and willing to not only help with parts or software errors, but also offer general advice on how to best set up jobs or achieve a result I’m scratching my head over.”
Baker adds: “Kongsberg have been right on to every issue in a flash and the team are really happy with the service and patience of their skilled professionals.” So, he’d recommend the Kongsberg to others? “Yes 100%.”
What’s next?
In the immediate future, there’s CIM’s 2025 local charities support calendar, one of its annual traditions. Baker says: “It’s one of our many give-backs – it allows us to promote 12 charities that have a connection to different members of our team and which we believe do great things for others.”
On the equipment front, Baker is concentrating on getting the most out of his recent investments. Further plans are a bit more modest, he says: “Only a beefier laminator, and we may upgrade the Colorado when we feel it’s getting tired, as it’s now four years old.”
SPECIFICATIONS
Bed size 3.6x3.6m
Speed 75m/minute
Acceleration 1G
Price Dependent on configuration
Contact Kongsberg Systems 07966 276 840 www.kongsbergsystems.com
COMPANY PROFILE
Set up in 2000 by three friends, CIM has expanded to employ 25 people with a turnover of around £2m, serving mostly East Anglia but with some customers further afield. It offers a complete signmaking and graphics service, as well as vehicle wrapping, with a range of UV and solvent inkjets. Its recent 18 month, £1m investment saw it add an adjacent factory unit on the Rackheath Industrial Estate outside Norwich and buy the larger 3.2m Kongsberg digital cutting table.
Why it was bought...
The company’s existing table was a 10-year-old 1.6m model. “We wanted 3.2m so we could cut any size sheet or many sheets sideways for speed and dual loading,” says MD Mark Baker.
How it has performed...
Baker says: “As all technology moves on it is of course more accurate, easier to use, easier to change tools, faster, and the file tech is miles more advanced than what we were used to.
“We can offer greater accuracy, especially on vinyl and paper products, it’s superb. Plus we can cut differing angles on Xanita to create different 3D shaped products.”
