For Kolbus Technologies, the Future is Multi-Facetted

RAHDEN, GERMANY—Feb. 27, 2012—See new systems and new engineering exhibited and in live production on the biggest drupa stand in Kolbus GmbH’s history. Profitable machines and systems for conventional postpress and for digital print processing will be shown.

The Kolbus drupa stand will be over 2,000 m². The stand team of around 100 employees and partners will be ready with information and open for in-depth discussions of visitors’ specific requirements.

“Simply Press Book” is the Kolbus answer for new and profitable business in the growth area of digital book production. Photobooks are already a success story and other digital printing applications are opening up. The many machines in action on the Kolbus stand in Hall 16 will give visitors some idea of the comprehensive range of Kolbus machinery.

Bookjet – from profitable features to the in-house value-adding chain
From Book and Inkjet to the Bookjet is a key concept in digital post-print processing from Kolbus. The Bookjet concept changes the old approach to post-print processing in every way. A Bookjet is capable of producing books with different content and different number of pages, not in batches, but one after the other.

The number of pages can vary widely; the Bookjet can produce books of 20, 200, or a thousand or more pages—one book after the other from web-based, inkjet digital printing. It can produce 1,000 titles a day and millions of books a year—each book in a matter of seconds and with zero makeready effort. Bookjet is the concept for perfect, cost-competitive and profitable finishing of digital print products.

Visitors to drupa can expect to see impressive demonstrations of the world’s fastest digital printing press heading up a complete production line for digital print products—where the starting point is the paper roll and the end product a finished book. The large-format, inkjet digital printing press is a Timsons T-Press shipped from the U.K.

In a fully automated, non-stop production line, the folded signatures from the press are transported in a shingled stream and processed sequentially by a Kolbus SF 832 sequential feeder. Simultaneous separation of single sheets via a number of feeders and magazines or sequential sheet-fed book block production from separate batch production will function equally smoothly.

The Kolbus KM 200 perfect binder with its highly dynamic, servo-motor driven thickness adjustment, processes book blocks with thicknesses varying from two to 60 millimeters. Continuous automatic adjustment to the changing book thicknesses makes non-stop production possible. The fully automatic HD 143.P three-knife trimmer trims three sides of the book blocks also in a continuous process with no make-ready effort. The line can be transformed into a photobook machine by adding an XHB 500 feed unit upstream of the KM 200 perfect binder to allow sequential single-sheet feed.

Perfect binding line 9,000 cycles/h – everyone wants a good price-performance ratio!
A lot of space on the Kolbus drupa stand is given over to conventional post-press machines. Highlights here include the KM 600.C, an improved version of Kolbus’s successful perfect binder, targeted especially at fast, cost-competitive production of brochures, magazines, catalogues and book blocks. The KM 600.C is a universal machine and a candidate for many applications in multistage printing companies, trade bookbinders and digital printers.

Many engineering innovations – from infeed to delivery – have measurably improved performance and user-friendliness and cut make-ready times still further. The Kolbus KM 600.C is a perfect binder for industrial-scale postpress in the performance range up to 9,000 cycles/h and it’s being offered at an extraordinarily attractive price. Visitors to the drupa will be able to watch the new Kolbus inline perfect binder line consisting of a ZU 822.C gathering machine, a KM 600.C perfect binder and an HD 153.M three-knife trimmer.

Record-breaking – the BF 530 book finishing line
The BF 530 operates at faster than a book a second, making it currently the world’s fastest book finishing line. With this technology, KOLBUS is helping to keep the printed book competitive in the Internet era. With a number of new and improved features, the headbanding station is particularly operator-friendly. Fully auto- mated servo axes result in significantly shorter makeready times.

To illustrate how flexible this 70 cycle/min machine is, Kolbus is demonstrating a number of applications all of which present different challenges to the bookbinder. Highlights include sectional makeready in production of digitally printed hardcover products and flexible casemaking with varying spine widths. The new 70 cycle/min book finishing line comprises these main units:

LE 660 bookmark machine, BF 530 book finishing line, DS 392 compensating stacker and SU 652 jacketing machine. The offline DA 270 casemaker operates under the Copilot control system and centre strip cross-cut unit. This is engineering with the maximum attention to detail and it’s obvious from start to finish, for example in the casemaker’s integrated edge cutter.

High-end packaging for luxury goods
Premiere at the drupa for the new business area Packaging Production. Know-how transfer from casemaking has enabled KOLBUS to open up new markets with clear growth potential – especially for machinery to produce packaging for luxury products such as jewelry and cosmetics. The company will be demonstrating efficient production systems for packaging, especially for handling sensitive, easily damaged and often expensive materials. The production line incorporates a DA 260 automated casemaker linked inline with an SA 260 lining machine and can be operated by one person.

Trends and challenges
A visit to the Kolbus stand offers not only firsthand experience of the latest technologies, but also an opportunity for intensive discussions with Kolbus specialists. KOLBUS experts can help visitors to evaluate the importance and potential for their business development of moving to a technology such as digital printing – and help them to identify cost-effective machine configurations. Kolbus customers value this expert input, because productivity has to be the key metric in all investment decisions. Markets and consumer acceptance are in a constant state of flux and the indus- try needs to be prepared for this. Even with the growing popularity of electronic readers, all types of print products will continue to play a very important role.

Source: Kolbus.