Bindery - Finishing

THOUGH PRINT 09 may have gotten off to a slow start, the crowds eventually showed up. And when they did, many of them headed right for the bindery equipment. Nowhere was that more true than at the Standard Finishing Systems exhibit, which was bustling with activity on the third day of the show, even as other booths appeared to be on siesta. Mark Hunt, director of marketing for Standard, thought he knew why.

CHERYL BUXTON is pretty up-front about the fact that some of the equipment in her Topeka, Kan., in-plant is older than the employees who run it. In June, the director of the Division of Printing and Surplus Property for the state of Kansas replaced a 30-year-old stitcher with a state-of-the-art Muller Martini Bravo-Plus saddle stitcher with AMRYS (automatic makeready system).

Though attendance was noticeably down on the first three days of Print 09, by Monday morning it was starting to look like a trade show again. Booths were packed with attendees, and vendors were busy giving demos, trying to capitalize of the sudden resurgence of interest after a lackluster weekend. IPG spent four days at the show, and the first three...let's just say we never had any problem finding someone to talk with at vendors' booths. Perhaps the beautiful Chicago weekend weather lured many to delay their arrival. (Or maybe it was the questionable wisdom of starting a trade show on a Friday.) Whatever the reason, though, by Monday morning, attendees arrived with a vengeance, including scores of in-plants managers.

Tucked inside a nondescript brick building at the edge of campus, the University of Delaware’s Graphic Communications Center has brought a lot of favorable attention to the university in recent years. The quality of its offset printing has earned the in-plant numerous awards, including two Best of Show honors in the In-Print contest. Now the 19-employee in-plant is bringing the Fighting Blue Hens into the spotlight once again by becoming one of the first in-plants to install a new Xerox iGen4 digital color press. 

After more than 10 years of service, the two-tower collator/booketmaker at Ken Maley’s in-plant was showing its age. Though it had served the Monroe Two-Orleans Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) very well, it was increasingly down for maintenance, and repair costs were mounting.

The University of Delaware's Graphic Communications department has installed a Xerox iGen4 digital color press and a 20-station Standard 5500 Stitchliner.

The ReproGraphic Services department at San Diego State University prides itself as being a small but versatile group. To prove it can be even more nimble and flexible, the in-plant recently updated its bindery and rearranged the pressroom for a more efficient workflow. In late June, the shop installed a Morgana DigiFold 5000P folder and a Duplo System 5000 bookletmaker with two eight-bin towers. The Morgana folder joins an older Baum folder, while the Duplo replaces a 16-year-old Horizon booklet-maker. Since the new machines are much quieter than their predecessors, the in-plant was able to reduce noise levels. 

To improve the quality of its brochures, booklets, post cards and color statements, the 23-employee printing and mailing operation at Western & Southern Financial Group recently became one of the first in-plants to install the new Xerox iGen4 digital press. Dan Cowan, Print/Volume Document Production Manager, feels the quality of the iGen4’s output is even better than that of the iGen3. “It’s much closer to offset,” he contends.

Standard Finishing Systems has opened a new 17,000-square-foot National Customer Demonstration and Training Center at its Andover, Mass., corporate headquarters. It features nearly every Standard solution: three-knife trimmers, folders, saddle stitchers, perfect binders and much more. High-speed finishing for production digital printers is demonstrated with in-line saddle stitching and folding solutions.

Despite the sour economy, xpedx is investing. That was the message the company wanted to send when it showed off its new Cincinnati-area print technology center to graphic arts journalists last month. It is reportedly the only U.S. center demonstrating equipment from a variety of manufacturers.