Government Publishing Office Adds Finishing System for Inkjet Products

By Bob Neubauer

Producing the Federal Register, House and Senate calendars, reports, and other materials just got a lot less complicated for the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) with the installation of a new finishing line from Standard Finishing Systems. The country’s largest in-plant transitioned these and other publications to inkjet and has been printing them on its Canon Colorstream and VarioPrint i200+ presses. To finish these jobs, the printed rolls had to loaded into an offline Kolbus folder to be converted into book blocks, which then had to be carted to a binder for binding, covering, and trimming.

The new finishing line from Standard Finishing Systems at GPO.

Thanks to the new system, the entire binding process is now being done in one smooth process, without extra manual intervention.

The new Standard line includes:

A Hunkeler UW8 unwinder
A Hunkeler PF7 plow-fold module
A Hunkeler CS6-HS cutter
A Horizon BQ-480 four-clamp perfect binder
A Horizon HT-1000V three-knife trimmer

GPO produces about 20,000 books per month on the new line, creating glued book blocks from four-, six-, and eight-page signatures. The process is semi-automated; operators choose pre-composed templates on the binder and trimmer.

“Currently, we are working with vendors to design barcodes to fully automate setup on the binder and trimmer,” notes Greg Estep, managing director of GPO Plant Operations.

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Bob Neubauer Author's page

Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.

GPO Adds Finishing System for Inkjet Products