Digital Technology And the Bindery

AFTER YEARS of healthy investment in prepress and press, in-plants are finally taking notice that their bindery is inefficient, unproductive and poorly suited to the short-run requirements of today’s print market. At the same time, printers recognize that manufacturers are bringing labor-saving innovation to the bindery.

Automation stands out as the most powerful theme, with stepper motor controls, touch-screen interfaces and integrated digital workflows that enable automated setups and changeovers. Also significant, in-line finishing is gaining favor for some work—especially digitally imaged output.

Digital printing sparked a wave of in-line finishing several years back, with high-speed monochrome printers introducing a range of in-line saddle stitching, perfect binding and even three-side trimming options. These systems have the benefit of supporting variable sheet-count/variable information jobs with full integrity, since the sheets never leave the system. The digital print file is submitted and the finished product exits the back-end of the system, ready to be boxed and shipped.

In-line booklet making with color-imaged sheets presents different challenges. Digital color tends to crack when folded. And creative departments want to design full-bleed color documents, but production digital color presses don’t typically image edge-to-edge. The latest generation of bookletmakers solves these problems with in-line sheet scoring—to minimize cracking and enhance lay-flat folding—and in-line head and foot bleed trimming.

Perfect binding digital color poses further challenges. Digital color covers and inside sheets have been heat-shocked, dehydrated, static-charged and then applied with fusing oil—all of which work against adhesive penetration and binding strength. The economics of short-run digital color imaging also mandate ultra-fast setups. PUR adhesives (polyurethane reactive) are one of the best solutions to this problem, but they have only recently become available on shorter-run binders. Nordson has retrofit some EVA/conventional hot-melt short-run binders for PUR, and the new Horizon BQ-470 boasts interchangeable PUR and EVA glue tanks. This type of system gives maximum application flexibility and first-off, high-quality books (short runs provide no tolerance for setup spoilage).

Making Booklets

Until recently, there were just two predominant booklet making methods. For longer runs, multiple-up press sheets are signature-folded off-line, then loaded into gathering stations that are in-line with a stitcher and three-knife. This permits high throughput speeds, lets you build high sheet-count booklets and delivers a tightly folded, three-side trimmed product. But saddle gathering lines are expensive and have large footprints. Large-format sheets must be separately folded into signatures before being loaded. Finally, saddle lines are notoriously time-consuming to set up and change over, making them inefficient for short-runs.

The other method uses collators to gather flat, four-page signatures and present them to an in-line stitcher/folder/face-trimmer. These systems typically have digitally controlled changeovers for short-run efficiency, and the flat sheet method avoids the signature folding step. The knife-folding technique used by this class of bookletmaker tops out at about 22 physical sheets (max booklet size 88 pages) and the resulting fold can be “rounded” (not sharp and flat), depending on sheet count and stock thickness. Production rates vary up to around 4,000 booklets per hour. These systems typically face trim only, and two-up jobs must be cut down separately.

Bridging the gap is the automated Standard Horizon StitchLiner system. It also uses flat four-page signatures, but the sheets are gathered into sub-sections that are scored, plow-folded and then accumulated onto a saddle. The complete set is stitched and delivered to an in-line three-side trimmer. Production is up to 5,500 booklets per hour.

More for Less

Buyers of consumer electronics are used to getting more performance for less money every year, just as in-plants stand to get more finishing power per dollar invested than they did just a few years ago. This has a lot to do with “big system features” and higher productivity being brought down-market to shorter-run equipment. In-line cover scoring on a perfect binder used to be available solely on larger binding lines, but it’s now a standard feature on a fully automated single-clamp binder costing around $45,000.

When your clients submit short run jobs, they demand the same professional finished quality that they are accustomed to on long runs—the kind of quality that used to be available only from big, expensive finishing lines. We expect to see more quick set-up equipment that delivers high-end capability and quality, as short runs become a bigger share of the in-plant’s production mix.

On-Board Intelligence

The bindery specialist your in-plant relied on in the past is not as crucial to your shop’s success as he or she once was. Many of the specialist’s expert skills have now been systematized and built into intelligent on-board control systems that let even novice operators set up an automated folder and run challenging jobs.

Automation is often touted as the solution to the fast, accurate make-readies required for short-run work, but automation also has a powerful impact on the training and necessary skill levels of bindery staff. As more intelligence is built into bindery equipment, in-plants should be able to produce higher-quality finished products at lower cost, regardless of run length.

Equipment vendors have been racing to market with fleets of JDF-ready products. It’s interesting to note that some of our earliest JDF adopters are progressive in-plants, eager to bring the power of computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) to all areas of their production workflow.

The pace of change in the bindery used to be slow; printers could “make do” with older equipment. Those days are gone. The rapid adoption of digital technology in post-press is leading in-plants to choose: modernize the bindery to stay competitive, or operate older systems that add a high labor burden and watch those jobs migrate out-of-house. The technology revolution that has been quietly building in the bindery has become a strong call to action.IPG

Mark Hunt is director of marketing for Standard Finishing Systems, based in Andover, Mass. A leading supplier of print finishing systems, paper handling equipment and reprographics products, Standard markets Horizon and Hunkeler products through a network of independent dealers and a direct sales force. For more information visit:

www.sdmc.com