Finishing - Digital

Both the offset and digital community have much to offer each other, and much to learn from each other. I'm waiting for a new finishing community or organization to arise that will help bring them together.

There were many attempts to integrate press and finishing over the years. A few actually worked. But most were considered as a drag on press output. When the in-line finishing module stopped (for whatever reason), so did the press. And this was a definite no-no.

While the conventional bindery may be in a bit of danger (long-term), packaging faces a more robust future. It might be well worth it for today's "bindroids" to get up to speed on this market.

Standard Finishing Systems partner Hunkeler reported another successful Innovationdays event in Lucerne, Switzerland last month. Integrated total solutions from software to finished product spanned the hall with a special focus on uptime, productivity, and ease-of-use. During the opening day press conference, Hunkeler also announced positive business results for 2012 and further expansion of its Wikon headquarters.

Back in the heyday of high-volume print, the pecking order among bindery manufacturers was fairly well-established. The "heavy-iron" firms in the U.S. had their place, but the renowned German and Swiss firms (like Muller Martini) were rapidly gaining U.S. market share. But as digital print began to gain traction in the new millennium, a curious thing happened. The mainline manufacturers were slow to match their machines to the new realities of the digital space.

Standard Finishing Systems has announced two new installs—a new Standard Horizon VAC-1000 collator and ST-40 inline stacker at SpringDot of Cincinnati; and a Standard Horizon BQ-270V automated perfect binder and Standard Horizon HT-30C automated three-side trimmer at Usherwood Office Tehnology's Syracuse, NY location.

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.