Profitable digital printing operations are backed up by efficient binding and finishing capabilties

By Erik Cagle

Last Chance for Automation

By Mark Hunt

The bindery may be the last remaining area where there is a significant opportunity to gain digital efficiency in the print production process. Prepress and the pressroom are driven by a steady stream of ones and zeros, but most of that data falls to the floor once the ink (or toner) hits the page and the sheets enter the bindery.

We see great promise in leveraging the benefit of JDF across the bindery. But JDF is still a reach for printers that lack the IT infrastructure or necessary upstream workflows.

The good news is that postpress equipment today has advanced on-board automation that doesn’t need to be connected to a digital workflow to deliver significant benefits. We see two areas of the digital bindery that have immediate return for printers.

Perfect binders, trimmers, saddlestitchers and folders are now equipped with advanced color touchscreens and end-to-end automation that dramatically lowers changeover time and lets you save and recall recurring jobs. These systems have been designed from the ground up for automation, with precision servo-motors that control all formerly manual setups.

The software intelligence and ease-of-use behind this automation is as critical as the hardware. It’s one thing to enter fold-panel measurements and then watch servos drive fold plates and side guides into position. The significant efficiencies are gained when a lower-skilled operator can simply input sheet size, select fold style from an icon-based menu, and then rely on the machine to run all the algorithms necessary to properly set up the folder so that the first sheet is accurate and the job is ready-to-run in minutes.

The other area we see developing involves more direct integration between digital imaging and postpress. As ink-jet and toner rollfed printers move up the speed and color fidelity curve, and webs inch wider, there is a growing need to efficiently process this output into finished documents.

Standard recently showed two integrations from Horizon and Hunkeler that allow one-pass finishing from a roll without material handling, touchpoints or added labor at speeds up to 600 feet per minute. This ability to streamline production of saddlestitched booklets, complex direct mail pieces or other end products from a roll—with personalized information, variable sheet count and full document integrity—will become a key factor in bringing down unit cost of production.

The bindery is one of the last frontiers for measurable print production savings. Conventional offset shops will benefit from new digital postpress systems that are powered by intelligent automation. And, as high-volume digital print becomes even more prevalent in the commercial space, some legacy bindery processes will be supplanted by new, digitally controlled postpress systems that deliver new and necessary levels of production efficiency.

Mark Hunt is director of marketing at Standard Finishing Systems.

WHEN IT comes to digital printing, sometimes it's not so much about how much margin you earn, but how much you can avoid losing. And one's ability to skillfully maneuver digitally printed product through the binding and finishing process just may enable you to avoid a nasty kick in the pants as the completed job heads out the door.

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Digital Finishing: Crossing the Finish Line