I took over procurement at our commercial printing plant in Midtown back in 2019. Honestly, I wasn't ready for what I walked into.
Our shop runs two Goss Community presses—workhorses, but getting old. The senior press operator, who'd been there since the '80s, had been buying parts basically on autopilot for years. No tracking. No competitive bids. Just phone calls to the same distributors his dad used in the 1970s. My job was to bring some financial discipline to how we managed that fleet.
Everything I'd read about industrial press management said the best approach was to stick with OEM-approved parts and scheduled maintenance. In practice, after six years and analyzing roughly $180,000 in cumulative spending, I found a different picture entirely—especially when you start factoring in reconfiguration, relocation, and the growing pressure from the digital side (including a side project with an Entina 3D printer for proof-of-concept work).
Part 1: The Backstory—Why I Started Tracking
In Q3 2019, we did a full reconfiguration of our Goss Community press line. We were shifting from a straight-run booklet format to a collect-run signature setup. That meant reconfiguring the folder, realigning sections, and replacing a bunch of old cylinders. The quoting process was… let's call it opaque.
The original vendor, who shall remain nameless, quoted us $47,000 for the job. That felt high, so I got a second quote from a specialist in Ohio. They came in at $38,500. I almost went with the lower bid until I started digging into the fine print.
Let me rephrase that: I learned to read between the lines of a service agreement.
The Ohio vendor's quote excluded travel time ($120/hour), per diem for two technicians ($85/day each), and any 'on-site engineering' if the install deviated from the blueprint. The original vendor's quote? All-inclusive. When I calculated TCO for the Ohio option—travel, per diem, potential engineering extras—it came to $44,200. That's a 15% difference hidden in fine print. The local vendor, despite being more expensive upfront, actually saved us money in that specific case.
But don't quote me on those exact numbers; this was six years ago, and I've slept since then.
Part 2: The Process—Tracking Every Penny
After that, I built a cost tracking system. Not fancy—a shared spreadsheet with color-coded rows. Every purchase order for the Goss Community presses went in: parts, maintenance, reconfiguration labor, even the coffee for the visiting engineers. Over six years, I tracked 87 line items totaling just over $180,000.
The $8,400 Lesson: Vendor Switching
In 2021, I compared costs for cylinder replacement across 4 vendors. Vendor A (our original) quoted $12,000 per unit. Vendor B (a newer entrant) quoted $8,500. That's a 29% difference. I almost bought four from Vendor B immediately. But then I noticed something in the purchase history: Vendor A's price included a 60-day warranty on installation. Vendor B didn't include warranty unless purchased separately ($750 per cylinder).
That 'cheap' option would have cost us an extra $3,000 for comprehensive coverage. But here's the twist: we decided to take the risk with Vendor B on one test cylinder. It worked fine. Over the next two years, we bought six more from them, saving approximately $21,000 compared to Vendor A's pricing, even after paying for extended warranties on two of them.
Switching that vendor saved us about $8,400 annually—roughly 17% of our parts budget. I want to say we saved more, but I'm not 100% sure, so let's stick with that figure.
The Reconfiguration Cost Trap
In 2023, we undertook another reconfiguration—this time to install a new ribbon deck and folder upgrade. The conventional wisdom in our industry is that you should always hire the original press manufacturer for these sorts of major retrofits. They know the machine, they have the drawings, they're faster.
I found the opposite to be true. The OEM quoted 16 weeks lead time and $65,000. We found a specialized reconfiguration firm (who I'll call 'Midwest Press Services' just for this story) that quoted $52,000 and 10 weeks. They'd done similar work on a Goss Community at a plant in Illinois. But I was nervous—reconfiguration is expensive to get wrong.
The project completed in 9 weeks. The press was running at 98% of target speed within 48 hours of startup. The total cost was $54,700 (we had a minor engineering change order for the folder infeed). The lesson? The old belief that only OEMs can handle Goss press reconfiguration comes from an era before specialized independent engineers existed. That's changed.
At least, that's been my experience with this specific type of work. Your mileage may vary if you have a very rare press model.
Part 3: The Digital Distraction—Entina 3D Printer & The Fume Question
Now, here's where the story gets a bit sideways. Around the same time, I got tasked with evaluating an Entina 3D printer for creating sample packaging prototypes. The marketing team wanted to show clients mock-ups without wasting production press time. Seemed reasonable.
I started researching. The Entina 3D printer was cheap—$299 on sale. But then I saw a question that keeps popping up online: 'Are 3D printer fumes toxic?' I'm a procurement guy, not a safety engineer, so I asked our plant safety manager. He pointed me to the OSHA guidelines on additive manufacturing fumes (which I glanced at—so don't hold me to this). Basically, PLA filament is considered fairly safe; ABS and resin can release VOCs. We went with PLA.
But here's the real cost lesson: that $299 printer wasn't $299. We needed a dedicated enclosure (another $120), a HEPA air filter ($80), specific PLA filament ($30 per spool, and we used 4 spools in the first month just testing), and an IT guy to set up the network connection ($200 in labor). Total first-year cost: approximately $750, not including the time the design team spent learning the software.
The Entina 3D printer produced decent prototypes—good enough for client meetings. But the 3D printer icon on our network started showing up in my cost tracking as a separate line item. The fumes question was a non-issue for PLA, but the overall cost of ownership was higher than the sticker price suggested. That's true for many things in our industry.
I'm not entirely sure the Entina printer was a net positive, cost-wise. It saved some press time, but introduced new operational costs. If I were doing it again, I'd probably rent one for a month first instead of buying outright.
Part 4: The Results & The Reckoning
By early 2025, here's where we stood:
- Total tracked spending (2019-2025): $180,000+ on the Goss Community presses.
- Savings from vendor switching: ~$8,400 annually (~17% of parts budget).
- Reconfiguration cost overruns (original quote vs actual): We kept them under 5% after the first lesson.
- Entina 3D printer total cost: ~$750 year one, plus the design time.
- Health concerns (3D printer fumes): Resolved by choosing PLA filament and proper ventilation. No toxic exposure issues.
What did I learn? First, the conventional wisdom about press management—stick to OEM parts, never switch vendors, don't trust cheap options—is partially rooted in an era before data tracking. Today, with six years of invoices in a spreadsheet, I can tell you that vendor relationships matter more than one-off savings, but blind loyalty costs money.
Second, the Goss Community press, despite its age, is a predictable machine if you track its lifecycle costs. The reconfigurations we did in 2019 and 2023 were transformative, not destructive. They extended the press life by years.
Third, the digital printing industry (including tools like the Entina 3D printer) isn't a direct threat if you manage your fleet costs properly. The fumes question is real, but solvable. The real threat is letting your existing equipment become a financial black hole.
That said, I should note: our experience is specific to our plant, our labor rates, and our volume of press runs. The numbers I've quoted are from memory and my (somewhat disorganized) spreadsheet. Verify current pricing at your vendors. Rates may have changed since 2024. And if you're evaluating a Goss press reconfiguration, get at least two quotes—and read the fine print on travel and labor.
If I had to give one piece of advice to a fellow cost controller at a commercial printing shop: build the spreadsheet. Track the parts. Track the labor. And don't assume the 'premium' option is always the safest bet. Sometimes the independent specialist with ten years of Goss Community experience knows the machine better than the OEM's junior engineer. That's been my experience, and after $180,000 in tracked costs, I'll stand by it.