Finishing Flexibility — Setting the Standard

It was only a matter of time before someone could build the better mousetrap that Donnie Webb had long envisioned.

Webb, president and owner of Mobile, AL-based Superior Printing, had envisioned the ideal saddlestitching system. It would be a flat-sheet collator/bookletmaker that could fold, stitch and cap off with a three-knife trim.

“I knew what I wanted; I just had to wait for somebody to build it,” Webb says. “I run mostlyquarter-size presses, with one half-size. I looked at signature collators, but my production was not really set up for running a lot of signatures. A flat-sheet collator was really what I needed.”

Webb had been using a handfed machine and a seven-station unit that was performing stitching and folding. Thus, gaining speed and efficiencies was vital for Superior Printing.

Webb found what he was looking for while attending the 2004 Sunbelt Graphics show in Atlanta—the Horizon StitchLiner 5500 from Standard Finishing. Just to be sure he wasn’t dreaming, Webb spent two days putting the system through the ringer. When Webb exhausted the various test runs, the decision was pretty easy.

“It pretty much did all I asked it to do,” Webb notes. “That’s what made my decision. . .I bought it right off the floor.”

While mostly producing standard 8.5x11˝ saddlestitched books, Superior Printing might fashion a 36-page booklet that is completely cover weight, or small jobs such as 3.5x5˝ booklets. Webb was somewhat surprised that the system could consistently trim up to 1⁄32˝ accuracy.

The StitchLiner also came in handy with a particular job—bank books, that called for the cover receiving an extra panel folded over the back cover.

“With the bank book, I would trim it right up to the edge of the fold and not cut the fold off, but still make a nice book,” Webb explains. “I’ve also done jobs where some of the inside pages were folded, and we just fold that about 1⁄16˝ short of the trim size. It’s very accurate on the trimming part.”

Besides stitching, Superior Printing offers most other binding solutions, including plastic coil, twin-loop wire and perfect binding. A local printer, Webb says his shop does trade printing and binding for other local printers, mostly short-run jobs and catalogs. His immediate plans include the addition of a five- or six-color half-size press.

When it comes to books, booklets and directories, there’s really no such thing as a typical job at Graphics Factory in Waukesha, WI. Whether it’s 2,400 copies of a 550-page book, 50,000 copies of a 24-page cable guide or 500 28-page newsletters, accommodation is the name of the game.

The wide variety of runs presents a challenge whenever a job in progress needs to be temporarily bumped from the finishing line for a quickie job. Time and ease of setup was a priority for Graphics Factory President Mike Wilson, and the $4 million sheetfed company sought a stitching solution that would continue to allow it to be all things to all customers.

“We had an older stitcher and decided that we wanted to be able to take a flat sheet, fold, stitch, do everything,” Wilson remarks. “We do a lot of two-color newsletters where we may run 1,000 to 2,000. With the older technology, it might take a half hour to do a makeready, where we can do a makeready with the StitchLiner in two to five minutes. It provides quick setups for short runs and retains the programs. The speed increased somewhat from the equipment we had, but we gained more efficiencies and capabilities.”

Retaining job data, which allows for changeovers without major headaches, is a considerable plus for Graphics Factory and its assorted customer base—from country clubs to medical facilities and advertising agencies. However, when Wilson checked out the StitchLiner at GRAPH EXPO in 2003, he questioned the equipment’s durability.

“Some flat-sheet collating bookletmaking systems are ‘destructo equipment,’ designed to run two hours a shift, not 16 or 24 hours a day. And when I first looked at the StitchLiner, I thought, ‘destructo,’ “ Wilson admits. “But we do run it 16 hours a day sometimes; most times it’s just for a single shift. It’s been able to stand up without showing any wear or tear, after almost two years of production.”

Finishing at the Factory

The StitchLiner is the only piece of finishing equipment at Graphics Factory, which houses a six-color, 29˝ Shinohara with coater, one- and two-color duplicator presses, and color and black-and-white Xerox digital printers.

This year, the company is looking to add business software, a new folder and a cutting system. With a mailing system being implemented in the future, Wilson imagines Graphics Factory will likely opt for a folder/gluer combo.

An environment overflowing with change is evident at St. Louis-based Reproxdigital. Since Steve Stone’s ownership group took over last March, the company has tripled its size in terms of top-line revenue. The company moved from a 10,000-square-foot facility to one of 25,000 square feet. The new equipment includes a six-color MAN Roland press, a Xerox iGen3 digital press, new folders, cutters and a JDF workflow. The 16-employee base has swelled to 42 workers.

Was it an adjustment for Stone and his team? Even the growing pains have callouses.

“With all of our new systems, it’s bad enough when one or two pieces of equipment don’t perform like you would want,” Stone says. “But when you’ve got about eight new pieces of equipment, new software systems and everything going in at one time...it hit us all at once. Things have settled down; we can take a deep breath now.”

When Reproxdigital went shopping for a new saddlestitching system, the StitchLiner’s ease of use made it attractive to Stone. But what really put the gear over the top was its status as a near-line stitching system; the company didn’t have a stitcher for its traditional offset or IGen3 on-demand output, so the StitchLiner was summoned to pull double duty for both offset and digitally printed work.

Reproxdigital has excelled at printing annual reports, high-end color sales brochures, stationery packages and the like, but Stone feels the future lies in the company’s Web-to-print programs.

“Currently, we have about 12 different programs that are either online or in some stage of development,” he says. “That’s really the focus of our business—this online presence.”

Reproxdigital had always farmed out its stitching work, but the onset of the iGen3 and its Web-to-print business demands called for an in-house solution. Not only is the StitchLiner easy to use, according to Stone, it made for easy transitions between the digital and offset platforms.

“It does take some getting used to, obviously, and there are some learning curves. It’s a whole different type of animal,” Stone remarks. “But it’s very easy to go from a pre-collated set off the iGen to the tower collators.”

Incredibly, Stone has more investment plans lined up for the near future. He’s looking to land an on-demand perfect binder, a new cutting system and a DocuTech-type monochrome imager.

“Our goal is to bring on more larger customers for our Web-to-print business,” he says. “We’d like to be near $10 million in sales.”