Collators - Upgrade And Breathe Easier

As customers clamor for faster turnaround, in-plants are relying on their collators for relief. Upgrading to newer models, managers say, has helped most of all.

TEN YEARS ago, Jason Seto's shop sent out any collating job over 5,000 copies. Twenty years ago, it was still collating by hand.

Today, Seto's shop can turn jobs around in as little as 24 hours, thanks to its in-line collator/stitcher/trimmer.

Although Seto's shop at the State of Hawaii's Department of Education has had a collator for the last 20 years, only recently did the shop strengthen itself by replacing its 11-year-old collator with a new Standard Horizon MC-80—and boy, have the results been impressive.

With the new collator, Seto says the in-plant can handle up to 5,000 saddle-stitched booklets in-house.

"Before we got this collator, I know we used to bid out a lot of jobs that included saddle-stitching," confirms Seto, reprographic specialist for the Honolulu-based in-plant. "And once we got the collator a lot of those jobs stayed in-house."

Though most in-plants today own collators, many of them are outdated. Managers who have upgraded their collators say they have been impressed with the speed and versatility of newer models.

For example, in Plano, Texas, J.C. Penny Print Services upgraded to a new Duplo System 4000 collator in December, and Manager Jerry Newman couldn't be happier.

"With the collator, you've got some really good technology that's coming out," he says. "Collators are in a period right now where people have figured out that they're a really valuable commodity to have, and the features are getting better and better."

In-line Additions

Though a collator can improve any in-plant, many shops say the full value of a collator can only be realized in conjunction with in-line support—more specifically, with an in-line stitcher and trimmer.

"You can use a collator without a stitcher/trimmer, but the only way to use a stitcher/trimmer without a collator is to hand feed them," observes Paul Hughes, supervisor of printing at Wyeth Laboratories, in Frazer, Pa. "So you definitely need the collator in-line."

Ron Orehowsky, vice president of LRP Publications, in Horsham, Pa., agrees. LRP's in-plant also uses an in-line system, and he says it's hard to imagine it any other way.

"There's a rule in production that says once you pick something up you shouldn't put it down until its done," explains Orehowsky. "The very fact that collating and stitching go together is in itself a reason to have a collator/stitcher."

Faster Equals Better

Production rules aside, practicality isn't the only reason for getting a collator. Time was, customers would give you a job, and as long as it came back sometime before the next ice age, everybody was happy.

Today we have print-on-demand, which means 24-hour turnaround, and sometimes less. This makes sending finishing work out to a bindery or collating by hand simply unacceptable. Even if you have an old collator, you may want to consider getting a newer, faster, more powerful one.

Jerry Stumpf, corporate print production manager at Sentry Insurance, in Stevens Point, Wis., also uses a Standard Horizon MC-80. He says his new collator offers him flexibility that his 20-plus-year-old model never did.

"We do a large amount of booklet making," Stumpf explains. "A booklet that took nine days to put together on the [Harris] Multibinder, we do it in a day and a half now."

Size Matters: Horizontal Vs. Tower

After you've determined you need a collator (or maybe just a new one) the next most important decision relates to size: Do you want a tower collator or a horizontal collator? Both have their merits, but the main difference is in the size of their footprints.

"Floor space is the largest advantage of tower collators," contends Stumpf. "If you're talking horizontal collators, you have to make a dividing line on that."

Absolutely, agrees Hughes of Wyeth Labs. Though the in-plant's old horizontal collator did have an enormous capacity, it also had an enormous footprint.

"We had a horizontal collator that was a 30-station set-up," recalls Hughes. "You needed track shoes to get from one end to the other, and you really had to hustle if there was a jam."

So after years of wearing out the treads on his Keds, when it finally came time to replace the old collator, Hughes opted for the tower-style Standard Horizon SpeedVAC 100.

Nevertheless, some in-plants still favor horizontal collators.

"I think tower collators are somewhat limited from the viewpoint of what they can do," asserts Orehowsky, of LRP Publications. "First off, if you're running friction feed on the tower collator, you're going to have trouble with coated stocks, and the accuracy is not as good as that of a pile-feed vacuum-operated system.

"The other part is that I think the performance is better because you can load considerably more into the feeder," Orehowsky adds.

There's The Rub

And that leads to another problem inherent in collating: marking. Whether you choose a friction-feed or vacuum-feed model, chances are you're not going to escape this problem. The difference is in how much you will have to endure.

Typically, friction-feed collators mark papers more, as the name might imply, but vacuum-feed models are not paragons of perfection either. However, despite their shortcomings, in the marketplace in-plants seem to prefer the vacuum-feed style.

"I think the runnability of the vacuum-feed collators is less jam prone and more reliable," affirms Seto, of Hawaii's Department of Education. "We can run coated stocks on it and we don't have to worry as much, but I do think marking will always be a problem."

Hughes, of Wyeth, also prefers vacuum-feed collators.

"As far as double-sheet detection and misfeeding, as soon as there's a problem it shuts right off," he raves. "It's just unbelievable how accurate it is."

Show Me The Money

Like any service-related transaction, identifying the tangible value of the convenience a collator will bring can be difficult. So it often boils down to looking at what you spend outside and making sure you can pay it back on time.

True, every in-plant is different, but the path to securing new equipment is usually the same. By showing how a new collator/stitcher/trimmer can satisfy the demand for just-in-time documents and reduce the need for warehouse space, in-plants can justify their purchases and increase their own value.

"I imagine for a small shop to put in that kind of a piece of equipment seems a little bit hard at first," allows Hughes. "But I don't know...when you see what it can do in a very small area, it just gave us a lot of versatility that we just didn't have before."

by Allan Martin Kemler