Finishing - Digital

Over the past five years, the "digital" approach has started to make headway against the traditional machines. Laser diecutting is getting both better, and faster, and is being combined with other systems to improve its productivity.

You will see a digital person's eyebrows raise a bit when you explain that a saddle-stitcher or binder in the offset sector can still be running efficiently 10 years (or more) on. But this disparity is about to change.

As the workloads being assigned to digital continue to grow, the existing "digital" finishing machinery is coming up short. Many (but not all) of the available folders, booklet makers, and binders are a bit light for these higher volumes and compressed production cycles. This has created real opportunity on the finishing end, and a diverse lot of finishing manufacturers are jumping into this space.

Publisher’s of all stripes are after the same goal: an inventory-less workflow in which unique books can be seamlessly printed and bound, one after the other. The capability to do the printing part of that equation is here already.

You may consider it to be part of the general packaging sector, but label printing and finishing require less equipment (in general) than the other markets segments. Your operation may be a better fit for labels than you think.

As the printing industry changes, so too must its dealer network in order to survive. Digital printing systems have now evolved to run 24/7, and at much higher speeds. The existing “digital” binders, stitchers, folders and such were not designed either for these speeds or work volumes.

Some 80 exhibitors are expected to present their latest products in over 75,000 square feet of exhibition space at Hunkeler innovationdays, from Feb 11-15, 2013, at the Messe Lucerne exhibition facility, in Lucerne, Switzerland. Integrated total solutions will be demonstrated to address every aspect of workflow, within every industry segment.

Digital printing and finishing has clearly transformed the print industry, but it’s also having an equal impact in packaging. A fascinating demonstration at GRAPH EXPO 2012 married a laser diecutter with a short-run folder-gluer to produce small printed cartons.

While I didn’t have a whole lot of time to stroll around the show floor during last week’s GRAPH EXPO 2012 in Chicago, one technology caught my eye. Vision, as in machine vision. Such systems are another tool that can be used to ensure consistent, high-quality finished products.

I’ve detected a lot of interest in GRAPH EXPO 2012, and I think attendance will be very good. So what does that mean for finishing? Well, more focus on digital. Rightly so, as the choices of digital print technology continue to expand.