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.

It's like blowing a tire on the last lap of the Daytona 500—infuriating and oh-so costly, mainly because there are plenty of competitors nipping at your heels, ready to pass you by. But you need not be Jeff Gordon to appreciate the value of a short, compact and linear digital finishing workflow.

Larry Vaughn, president of Houston-based Ideal Printers, is one of the industry's deans of business card printing. They're a necessary evil and boast a fraction of the margin reaped from your typical church bake sale. "You don't sell business cards to maximize profit. You try to minimize your loss," Vaughn notes.

For Vaughn, it's all about bindery automation. Ideal's automated online ordering system and front-end prepress flow, which whisks PDFs through the proofer and onto press, are quick and painless, as is the actual printing. But finishing, in general, lends itself to human intervention, multiple touches, various operations...and costly errors.

"On the digital end, we've installed automated off-line perfect binders, three-knife trimmers and stitchers," he says. "More and more, companies are realizing that they need to automate their bindery functions to eliminate the touches, the steps throughout the shop. Nowadays, people don't want to spend money, but that type of investment allows you to streamline the process and save money."

Redundancy is also crucial for the times that machines go down, notes Vaughn. Jobs arrive when they arrive but, unfortunately, the delivery date is always static. With several presses, four folders, multiple diecutters and perfect binders, Ideal Printers boasts scheduling flexibility and can turn jobs around in short order.

For years there has been debate over the merits of in-line versus near-line and off-line finishing. But, as job run lengths and turn times continue to dwindle, more and more printers have opted to segregate finishing in a digital printing context. The variability of digital printing jobs makes off-line finishing the better call, contends Tom O'Brien, partner at AccuLink. A provider of sheetfed and web printing, in addition to digital output, Greenville, NC-based AccuLink has opted for the near-line finishing route.

AccuLink's finishing capabilities include collating, stitching, folding, trimming, perfect binding, plastic coil and Wire-O binding, diecutting, foil stamping, embossing and UV coating. Over the years, the shop has carved out a name for itself by producing certain products, such as index tabs, and now churns out ultra short-run, perfect bound books (with tabs) and short-run scratchoff goodies. A new, exciting application for the printer is the marriage of table tents with QR (Quick Response) codes.

Digital printing is gaining dominance. In 2010-speak, a long run tops out at a couple of thousand, notes O'Brien. "We're seeing lengths get shorter and shorter every day," he says. "And the turn times are getting shorter. Customers' expectations are increasing, but the amount they think they ought to pay is decreasing."

Another advocate for off-line binding/finishing is TecDoc Digital Solutions of Hudson, MA, a small digital shop that produces documents, manuals, booklets, case studies, collateral and direct mail. With custom short runs, off-line finishing provides the flexibility that TecDoc requires, according to CEO David Trombino. With some of its gear featuring computer controls, setup times are cut, providing more flexibility in the number of jobs and configurations that can be pumped through the shop simultaneously.

One of TecDoc's more unique applications is customized direct mail that is shaped relevant to the customer's campaign. "For example, if the client is selling cowboy boots, the mail piece could be diecut in the shape of a boot," Trombino says. "All it has to do is fit with a certain aspect ratio requirement that the USPS puts out."

Folds Caused Cracking

Technology quickly corrected many of the issues that accompany digital finishing. Trombino notes that TecDoc initially had difficulty with single- and double-folds cracking the toner on the color digital pieces—an aspect that several printers here noted. A number of printers, TecDoc included, turned to a Morgana auto creaser to solve the dilemma.

Mindful that the finishing of digital products requires equipment specific to those needs, Fresh Color Press, of Eden Prairie, MN, debuted in 2003 with the required gear. Still, diligent preparation during the ramp-up process can't fully anticipate the problems that may arise. Brian Johnson, Fresh Color's co-owner, notes the company found difficulty with lamination adhesion to heavy-coverage materials that bleed, a familiar foe to digital finishers. It was remedied either by using a heavier, thicker laminate or by using stick laminate.

Fresh Color finds that its finishing department is easily up to the task of handling output from its three Kodak NexPress and two Kodak Digimaster presses, thus the decision to go with an off-line finishing workflow. Post cards, self-mailers, booklets, point-of-sale materials, invitations and pressure-sensitive labels head a product category which Johnson calls general commercial digital printing.

It is cost-prohibitive for many small digital shops—a term inherently redundant, given the size of the typical digital specialist—to boast every piece of digital finishing gear for every need that may arise. That won't stop Johnson from striving to keep all work in-house.

"Since so much of what we do requires fast turns, there's no time to send jobs out to be finished," he says. "There's also so much cost relative to sending work out—gathering, packing, doing a PO, dropping off, waiting and picking it up. We have always, from day one, wanted to finish as much as we can. For us, it's a big point of differentiation.

"A lot of commercial litho printers typically only have one digital color press, and they're not as good at it because they're not immersed in it. They don't have the finishing equipment that we do. In digital printing, finishing capability can be a powerful point of differentiation."

Many print shops that offer digital are not dedicated ones, which is the case with Ripon Printers, the pride of Ripon, WI. According to Mike Thorson, prepress manager, Ripon currently relies on off-line finishing gear, but is looking to go near-line in order to serve both the offset and digital masters.

Ripon offers perfect binding, stitching, trimming and folding. Its most recent digital press acquisition was a Canon imagePRESS C6000VP. Among the items on Thorson's wish list are automated slitting/cutting/creasing, short-run binding and UV coating.

"The equipment we're looking at is primarily near-line, so it can be co-located with the digital presses and be used for multiple presses," he says. "Flexibility and cost are the driving factors." PI

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Digital Finishing: Crossing the Finish Line