The intellectual rights to the Timson T-Fold high speed digital folder have been bought by Kolbus, giving the company a folder which interfaces with all digital print engines, putting print directly in the bindery.
The intellectual property includes engineering drawings, software, work in progress and foundry patterns. It will enable the company to manufacture parts in their Rahden factory, where they already have a large foundry capable of handling castings including side frames and cylinders. Taking on the manufacture of all of the T-Fold parts it will be able to seamlessly continue the servicing of all existing T-Fold machines in the field.
The T-Fold provides a high speed interface from any ink jet print engine directly into the binding line. It is capable of handling up to a 53″ web width and with fully automatic set-up for format change is equally compatible with narrow web formats. Servo motors and encoders power the ultra -fast set-ups and the variable collecting mechanism provides a wide range of formats and section contents. As well as being perfect bound the folded sections can equally be processed as glued blocks, sewn or burst bound.
The T-Fold was designed for full flexibility on all print devices and is capable of running at speeds in excess of 300 metres/minute . It operates on a wide range of book stocks, right up to heavy coated material.
Robert Flather, managing director, said, ‘We have been encouraged by customer comments to move in this direction and now with the T-Fold on board we will be able to form even deeper partnership relationships with them. It complements our existing Kolbus product range and means that we are now supplying all the components to feed from printed sheet to the bindery. Our sequential feeder technology is ideally suited to the T-Fold and print-on-demand products along with the Kolbus KM200 binder.
With Jon Walker on the Kolbus team in his role of vice president, Digital Solutions, we have a wealth of relevant experience to share with our customers. Jon ended his 23 years with Timsons as technical sales director where his strong background in mechanical design engineering and flair for the development of new products saw him heavily involved in bringing the T-Fold to market.’
