Printers 3 Speeds Time to Market with On-Site Finishing
Anthony Viscuso’s father founded Printers 3 as a small offset commercial printer in 1985. He says, “It wasn’t too long before he acquired our first digital press, a Xerox (Booth 1302) DocuTech, in the early 1990s.” Viscuso bought his father out in 2006, and completed the analog-to-digital transformation, with only two small offset presses remaining.
Bindery operator at Printers 3 demonstrates ease of set-up with the Standard Horizon equipment.
“Today, we’re a general commercial printer, producing a wide range of applications, but primarily books and manuals for schools, associations, businesses, and authors who are interested in self-publishing,” Viscuso adds.
Printers 3, located on Long Island, had an older saddlestitcher in place, but it took a long time to manually set up. “Plus,” he says, “I only had one operator that knew the machine.”
As a result, Printers 3 was outsourcing most of its bindery work. “This was challenging for us,” Viscuso says, “since it added at least two days to the process. And if there was a problem, the times could be longer. We needed to bring saddle stitching and perfect binding in house.”
“I decided to invest in Standard Horizon (Booth 1231) equipment,” he notes. “The equipment sold itself, but I also appreciated the knowledge and effort of the Standard team who helped me make the right choice.”
Viscuso chose the Horizon SPF-200A Bookletmaker with HOF-400 Sheet Feeder. This fully automated combination stitcher/folder and face trimmer has production speeds of up to 4,500 booklets per hour, and features fast set-up.
“This worked so well for us,” Viscuso reports, “that two months later we added a Horizon BQ-270V Perfect Binder. Now we are able to provide next-day delivery—or even same day—on many of our bound products.” This single-clamp binder also features fully automated operation for binding variable thickness books at up to 500 books per hour. It includes an automated, sensor-activated digital caliper system, which measures book block thickness and automatically transfers this data to the binder for quick, automated set-up with no cycle lag time for books of different thicknesses.
“We eliminated the elapsed time required to send binding out,” Viscuso says, “and we also can start binding as soon as one book is printed. It has made a huge difference in our turnaround time. Plus, we can store settings for repeat jobs, taking the set-up time down to almost nothing.”
Viscuso cites a recent book job for an author who needed 300 copies for a conference taking place the next day. “We were able to turn that around,” he says. Printers 3 also produces perfect bound common core math books for several school districts, as well as journals, both perfect bound and saddle stitched. “We also do a lot of event-related materials, typically perfect bound books that include ads. It’s a blessing to have perfect binding on-site to be able to handle all of these requirements.” Viscuso also describes work for a health care client in the 4th quarter that has them running seven days a week. “These are perfect bound books and some saddle stitched materials. There is no physical way on earth we could get this job done without having the Standard Horizon equipment in house.”
