Bringing It All Together

When purchasing a new collator, ask yourself what is best for your shop.

is it time for you to start looking for a new collator for your in-plant? If it is, there are several important questions to ask yourself before making a decision.

First off, can you afford to purchase the collator that you feel is best for your shop? If it's not in your budget right now, it may be better to wait until you can buy the equipment that you want. This is an investment that should last 10 to 15 years, so make sure you don't purchase an inferior device just to bring in some new equipment.

Computer programming and automation are options that will cut down on operator involvement and set-up times, but will drive up the price of the unit. What is more important to your shop for the future, the initial cost of the device or the time the equipment will save by having automated features? Shops with shorter runs may find automation to be an advantage.

Should you get a friction-feed or or suction-feed unit? Friction-fed sheets are rotated using a rubber tire, which can cause marking to the paper. This worry is eliminated with suction-fed or vacuum-fed units, which use a pulse or stream of air, and allow easier collation of glossy and coated stock.

Of course, these are just a few questions to ponder when making a decision. Making sure the equipment is a good fit for your shop is always what is most important. Here are some recent offerings from collator vendors.

The Watkiss Vario vertical collating system, distributed by A.B.Dick, can be custom built with two to 32 bins, to serve small and rapid-response printers. Suction and friction bins can be positioned in the same tower. Vario can be configured as either a tower or table-top collator. As a tower unit, it features a small, space-saving footprint, while as a table-top unit, it can be connected to a variety of bookletmakers.

C.P. Bourg produces the BST-10/50, a modular, vacuum feed, vertical collating system capable of speeds of more than 9,000 sets per hour. The base collator consists of 10 bins, which can be married to additional feed towers in increments of 10, for a total of 50 feed bins. The BST-10/50 incorporates flexible programming with memory, automatic doubles and miss, calibration and ascending or preset/reset counting.

The DC-10000S from Duplo offers a modular design allowing easy expansion of up to 60 bins depending on requirements. It has the ability to accommodate a multitude of sheet sizes and weights with little operator adjustment, or feeding or marking problems. Unique to the DC-10000S is a specially designed reject tray into which doubles or misfed sets automatically are diverted before they reach the accessories.

The Maxxum 20 Twin Towers Collating System offered by MBM has two separate 10-bin units that can work in tandem or independently, allowing production of two projects at once. Maxxum 20 has a 200-sheet bin capacity and adjustable speed controls that allow speeds of up to 2,100 sets per hour for offset stacking and up to 1,800 sets per hour for straight stacking. A control panel indicates double-feeds, misfeeds, empty bins, paper jams and full stackers, ensuring that the project is correct.

The Setmaster suction feed collating system from Rosback can handle applications from two to 35 stations. It is capable of collating all standard and special stock sizes and weights. Available options include stitching, folding, single and three-knife trimming, crash numbering, and corner and head stitching. Standard sizes range up to 29x40˝.

Spiel's Sterling S59 gatherer/collator has the ability to collate sheets as thick as 1⁄4˝ at a rate of 6,000 sets per hour. It can collate tabs, envelopes, greeting cards and numerous other materials. The stations are positioned on both sides, reducing the overall length by almost half. All adjustments are designed to be at your fingertips, to be more user friendly.

The SpeedVAC System from Standard is expandable from one to six towers, for up to 60 feed stations. This vacuum-fed system can collate 20 sheet sets at over 5,000 sets per hour. For maximum flexibility, each SpeedVAC tower can run full speed in either direction. The operator can run sets into a bookletmaker at the front of the system, while at the same time collating straight or offset stacked sets out of the rear system.

The Fenimore-Vijuk 920, from Vijuk, collates flat sheets, signatures, and tabs for perfect binding, side stitching or other purposes. Missing and double sheet detectors are featured, and it is available with an optional selective sheet count for each pocket. The Fenimore-Vijuk 920 comes with a stagger-stack delivery unit, and a count/programmable delivery unit is available. At speeds of up to 5,200 cycles-per-hour, it can be used alone or on-line with any binder.