Muller Martini Sigmaline at drupa 2012
As digital web book presses grow ever faster and wider, binding manufacturers are having to develop whole new ways of handling the output. Simon Eccles surveys some solutions.
The wider and faster that inkjet book presses become, the more that potential users are having to makecareful decisions about how they finish and bind the resulting copies. The first generations of continuous fed digital book press were relatively narrow, so 20 inch (520 mm) finishing lines were more than adequate and this size became widely used. Now that inkjets are appearing with 30 inch width (around 703 mm), there are new decisions to make about how to handle the output.
John Cracknell, managing director of IBIS Integrated Bindery Systems in High Wycombe, explained the major options. ‘The choice is sheeting, reel to reel and inline and we do pretty much equal amounts of all three.’ In this case, offline means that the web is cut into sheets that are then fed separately into a separate finishing line. Nearline means that the web is rewound and taken to the finishing line where it is unwound and fed into the line by various methods. Inline means the finishing line is fed directly from the web press, via arrangements such as slitters or plow folders. ‘Offline is a manual process of handling piles of sheets and loading them into a sheet feeder on our machine,’ said Mr Cracknell. ‘Some customers will see that as the obvious way to go, particularly if they are constantly changing format sizes. If you go inline or nearline it does cause complexity when you want to change format sizes. A benefit of offline or nearline is that you can select the best finishing speed to suit the book you are making.’
Nearline is favoured by a lot of printers and vendors as it allows the printer to run roll to roll at peak efficiency, he adds. ‘This does however mean that you can be waiting for some hours for a job because the first sheet to go into the roll goes into the middle and is the last to be unwound some hours later. It’s not great for books on demand. So that really has to be done inline, because that way you’re only waiting seconds for the finished book.’ Robert Flather, managing director of high end binding specialist Kolbus UK, reinforces the point: ‘Our experience is that you’ll get much better productivity if you run a wide web press in a nearline situation. The binder can process considerably more paper than even the Timsons press, so you can have one binding line supporting a number of digital presses.’
Plow or slit
However, going inline or nearline then determines how you get the web width down to single copies. Slitting and folding down to single book blocks is simplest, but it means that unless the size doesn’t vary then you can’t do ‘books of one.’ Plow folding costs more but is more flexible and will support books. IBIS’ main product is the Digi-Stitcher saddle stitcher, designed from the start for digital press work, and recently upgraded to Plus standard (see Centrefold, Digital Printer September 2012). It can be used inline, nearline or offline. A unique feature is the ability to switch the wire stitching off and to add cold glue to hold the sections together. This lets the gathered sections be perfect bound and IBIS offers a choice of integrated inline or offline perfect binders with its SB4 and SB5 configurations.
According to Mr Cracknell ‘The process of perfect binding becomes easier and the finished book looks more like a thread sewn book from the outside.’ Competing with IBIS, Hohner’s Digi-Finisher is a hybrid stitching line that can handle offset, digital or merge the two. It combines Hohner’s own saddle-stitching system inline with an MBO folder that takes the sequentially printed pages from a digital press. At drupa last year the original HSB 7.000 stitcher was replaced by the latest 8.000 model, which stitches at up to 8000 cycles per hour. Also new is the 6:1 setting that collects sections but doesn’t stitch them, so they can be perfect bound.
A prototype configuration was on the drupa stand with an unwinder and sheeter inline to the folder. This is now close to production, says John Sykes at Hohner’s UK office. Perfect Bindery Solutions distributes a very wide range of equipment from a long list of manufacturers. Managing director Steve Giddins draws particular attention to the recently uprated DGR Graphic Bookline for hard covers, which prepares blocks for casing-in and then adds the casing. This can be used with the DGR KM41 perfect binder, which can output either soft cover books, or trimmed blocks with end papers for casing-in by the Bookline. End papers are applied after the spine milling stage but before trimming, so they automatically fit variable book thicknesses. Another casing-in solution from PBS is the On Demand Machinery Super Sticker and Super Smasher combination, originally developed for large hard cover photobooks but suited to anything that needs 400 to 600 volumes per hour, said Mr Giddins. Also new via Perfect Bindery Solutions is the Smyth Digital Sewing line, a completely automated book sewer that takes digitally printed flat sheets into the 145 Automatic sewer via a new folding unit and outputs sewn blocks at the other end at a rate of 60 cycles per minute.
Timsons’ giants
Kettering based Timsons showed its giant T-Print inkjet book press at drupa, inline with a Kolbus binding line. The £2.9 million T-Print can take webs up 1245 or 1320 mm wide and runs at 200 metres per minute. To get the web down to something a finishing line can handle, Timson offers a choice of its own T-Fold or T-Book systems. T-Fold slits the web into ribbons, cutting and folding these into sections, ready for the downstream binder. At drupa a T-Print/T-Fold fed directly to a Kolbus SF832 sequential signature feeder and KM200 perfect binder system. This line was also demonstrated with nearline working. MPG Kings Lynn, which has one of the first two Timsons T-Prints as well as a Kodak Prosper 1000 inkjet press, runs a nearline Kolbus KM600 perfect binding line.
There are T-Folds on the end of each press, producing sequential folded sections. The alternative T-Book system is a web to book block production line that can run inline or nearline with any digital web at up to 4000 books per hour. The blocks are end-glued to hold them together temporarily until they reach the perfect binder. Clays in Bungay, which has the other Timson’s T-Print press built to date, uses T-Book running inline with a Muller Martini SigmaLine with Acoro perfect binding. Muller Martini first introduced modular book finishing for digital presses with its SigmaLine series at drupa 2004. At last year’s drupe, SigmaLines were shown running inline with inkjet web presses, including an HP T410 and a KBA RotaJet76. MBO also showed a nearline system creating book blocks and passing them to a SigmaLine sub-line. SigmaLine allows a choice of elements to be run inline, linked by the Connex control system that can also communicate with third party systems including presses. It can be configured for perfect binding with hard or soft covers, or for stitching. New at drupa was Presto II, an improved saddlestitcher that’s also suited to short run periodical production. For more complex saddlestitching there’s the Primera E160.
The Timsons’ T-shirts press at drupa
Speed or automation?
Riva Georg, Muller Martini product and sales manager, points out that pretty well every customer has different production needs, and therefore configurations. He gives an example of a nearline scenario to work with an HP T400 inkjet press, with an inline SigmaLine book block solution and a nearline Alegro perfect binder. The Alegro is much faster than the press, so in one shift it can process the output from three shifts on the press, he said. However, he added: ‘With the same layout but with a lower rated perfect binder you can go online and save personnel due to the very high degree of automation.’ Last year at drupa, Hunkeler showed part of its new modular book line, though there was not enough space for a full line.
At its own Innovationdays last month it had a full ‘Book On Demand’ line, taking 30 inch rolls from an Océ ColorStream 3500. Assuming a 6 x 9 inch book block with 96 pages, the result is 4490 books per hour. The system is designed to run inline with digital presses at up to 200 metres per minute. This is too fast for a normal festoon web buffer to cope with the temporary stops when the stacker unloads. So Hunkeler uses a non-stop two level stacker where blocks are diverted to the upper stacker while the lower unloads, and vice versa. Robin Brown, digital sales manager for Hunkeler’s UK distributor Friedheim, points out that ‘at 200 metres per minute you’d need an enormous buffer – a festoon as big as a house to catch it all!’ The first of these lines has been sold to Ashford Colour Press in Gosport, which will take delivery of it in March.
It will run inline with the company’s HP T230 colour inkjet web press, also a UK first that is being installed atthe same time.Friedheim also sells the MBO range which includes roll to sheet systems suited to nearline or online applications and the Tecnograf range, including short to medium run perfect binders and medium to long run casing-in lines plus the Cube automated case maker. It also handles the Wohlenberg range of three knife trimmers. Tecnau (another Friedheim agency) has now introduced the Libra 800, a ‘book of one’ line with size and format that’s totally variable from copy to copy. It takes pre-printed covers and blocks and brings them together based on barcodes. It can even handle folded flaps on the jacket if needed. After gluing it feeds the blocks into a three-knife trimmer that can open up the covers first so flaps are not cut off. One has been sold in the UK, but under non-disclosure so far, said Mr Brown.
IBIS’s Smart Binder Plus offline SB3 configuration.
