Solopress has installed a pair of Horizon HOF-400 high speed offline feeders from IFS.
One of the feeders has been installed to support the company’s new HP PageWide T250 web-fed inkjet press. The other has joined Solopress’ bindery line-up to support short run production from other presses.
‘We wanted something that would help us stitch the short runs from the new HP PageWide T250,’ explained head of operations Jack Clifford. ‘We easily manage the long runs with our existing machinery. For short runs we were spending more time setting up the stitcher than running it. The HOF-400 allows us to manage these shorter runs more efficiently by loading collated sets with many different titles.
‘It also gives us the flexibility to either complete jobs using the HOF or the hoppers. If there is a run with a high page count it makes more production sense to use the hoppers. If it is a small pagination then it is best to run it through the HOF-400.’
The HOF-400 provides flexible system configurations such as cover feeding, sheet insert on, variable page count, bleed trimming and creasing for digital printing. It can also be connected with the finishing devices for the offset outputs to process both digital and offset print.
Explaining why Solopress opted for the HOF-400, Mr Clifford added, ‘When we were making the investment we spoke to IFS to see what would be the best solution for stitched books of low quantity. The HOF-400 ticked all the boxes. We expect it to enable us to achieve a 20% to 30% increase in output.’
