CREATIVE AND CAPABLE

Sign design and manufacturing technology has now been around long enough for the equipment associated with the era of its launch to be regarded as ‘traditional.’ When ‘computerised signmaking’ was launched, many forward-looking signs and graphics producers saw the potential and decided to invest. History tells the rest of the story. The companies that adopted the technology and who thrived using it, did so because they drove it using signmakers’ skills. Understanding of layout, typography and the manufacturing art increased the potency of the new technology by orders of magnitude.

One of the companies that was there, in the 70s, before the birth of computerised signmaking, was Staffordshire Signs and Graphics. It’s a company that can be counted in the vanguard of computerised signmaking’s early adopters. Its name is also there in the ranks of those who grasped the opportunity and made it work brilliantly. It’s a company that’s still serving its clientele in the locality, and much further afield, to this day.

Staffordshire Signs has since both moved with the times and pioneered in its signing specialisations. It has adopted print as a central plank of its production and, with the design skills and production capabilities wrapped up in its experience, has made print its own for the benefit of its growing band of customers. Staffordshire Signs has much to be proud of and a lot to look back upon.

Looking back, doesn’t quite fit the company’s personality and its service-led business ethics though. Instead, it looks to the future, sees things through its customers’ ends of the telescope and it finds the opportunity in offering its customers more. It’s for those reasons that the company has invested again. It’s for those reasons that on this occasion it has put routing and digital cutting and print finishing at its disposal. It’s for those reasons, that it elected to install a Tekcel EXR from Complete CNC Solutions.

With so many years in business and the towering reputation that goes with it, the team at Staffordshire Signs and Graphics never knows quite what is coming its way in terms of work arriving at the door. Whatever turns up, though, it finds a creative resolution and a solution. Everything meets engagement and action. Nothing meets with blank looks.

The Tekcel EXR routing and digital cutting platform could have been made for Staffordshire Signs and Graphics. The example installed actually was. The stock platform was delivered bristling with options that extend the machine’s legendary capabilities even further. The machine is equipped to cut plastics, timber and metals to incredibly precise tolerances and to yield a very high quality finish requiring little if any manual intervention. Complex production is simplified by auto tool-changing and compliant materials handling. The system includes tools for precise cutting of printed matter, including films, to impossibly tight registration standards and its operation is as clean as the application demands thanks to high capacity waste handling. Fair to say that, like Staffordshire Signs and Graphics itself, its Tekcel EXR is ready for anything.

Complete CNC’s engineering team installed the big Tekcel in the space of a couple of days and spent time delivering full training and operational orientation to the team at Staffordshire Signs and Graphics too. The outcome is a safe and productive operation that really extracts the most from the system.

Richard Keasey, Staffordshire Signs and Graphics’ Managing Director said of the system and its installation, “We’re delighted to have installed the Tekcel EXR, having considered and auditioned our options. We’ve specified it with all the tools needed to tackle any work that comes our way. Our operators have very quickly hit their stride with it too. One of the most exciting dimension of having the Tekcel though only made itself apparent after we got it. We know it’ll do all the work we need to ask of it, but it has been a catalyst for new ideas too. There’s so much we can do, now and exciting new markets we can go for. It’s going to help us keep our customers more than happy.”

Complete CNC Solutions’ Managing Director, Julian Sage responded, “It’s great to see another Tekcel take its place out there and particularly so with such an established and respected company as Staffordshire Signs and Graphics. I know the team there will get the massive performance the machine offers working for them and I know that they’re engaged and creative too. There’s so much a company as creative as this can do with such a highly specified machine. I know it’s going to be a real success for them and I’m proud to have played a part in that.”

Staffordshire Signs and Graphics now looks resolutely forward. Any application out there that’s in need of a creative solution will find a long established and well equipped company that’s able to tackle it.