Bindery - Finishing

The move to a digital, on-demand platform was putting T.J. Keesler’s bindery in...well, a bind. Keesler, facility manager at Georgia Correctional Industries (GCI) in Buford, Ga., had to accommodate his customers’ needs for shorter runs and quicker turnaround times. “We just started out digital, on-demand printing about a year ago, and we realized that a lot of our customers wanted coil binding,” Keesler recounts. “We were farming this work out, or we were doing it at a much slower pace with some antiquated equipment and also some hand work. I wanted to automate the process.”

When cosmetics giant Mary Kay Inc. departed from the trend of producing products overseas, Keith Hopson, supervisor of Mary Kay Printing Services, in Carrollton, Texas, had to move fast. The company’s decision to make its products in the U.S. included the printing and finishing of leaflets and inserts. “Our world kind of got turned upside-down in August of 2007,” Hopson recalls. “We struggled for about four months trying to keep up with the orders.”

For years, producing commencement programs was a cumbersome task for Appalachian State University Printing and Publications. Printed sheets had to be moved by hand between stand-alone collating, stitching and folding equipment to create about 15,000 programs. “We hired temp employees for that type of work,” says Joyce Mahaffey, director of the Boone, N.C., in-plant.

It’s tough to rely on a punch that can’t handle tabs and constantly misfeeds. That was the case with Frank Oliver’s old punch. “It wasn’t working very well at all,” says Oliver, print shop supervisor for the Delaware-Chenango-Madison-Otsego Board of Cooperative Educational Services. “I was just looking for a better machine that had the simplest approach to punching paper.”

Prior to 2005, Brigham Young University’s Print & Mail Production Center did its plastic spiral binding with simple, manual tabletop machines. Then the Provo, Utah-based in-plant sent some representatives to Print 05, in Chicago. There, they first laid eyes on the PLASTIKOIL Concept QS2 Dual Interline system, from Gateway Bookbinding Systems. It allows for the in-house manufacturing of plastic spiral binding, coupled with automated coil insertion and finishing. The idea of being able to manufacture their own coil and have it automatically inserted convinced them to make the investment in this system.

Kansa Technology has installed a Kansa 320 Inserter in Cal Poly’s Graphic Communication Department, providing students with the latest technology in newspaper inserters and related material-handling equipment.

The Kansa inserter supports the university’s Goss International Web Printing Laboratory, which houses a Goss Community four-high publication press. In addition to teaching web publication printing, the Graphic Communication Department runs an experiential student-run and managed printing and publishing operation, University Graphic Systems. This enterprise allows students to produce the Mustang Daily.

Mathias Bäuerle's fully automatic leaflet folder CAS 21/4 NET has received the German Printing Industry Innovation Award in the category of post-press paper handling.

The leaflet folder is a computer-controlled fold unit for folding package inserts for the pharmaceutical and food processing industry. The novel operational concept reduces walking distances around the machine as well as setup times.

Duplo Corp. has a new corporate identity. To be implemented globally starting January 1, the new identity combines traditional values and expertise in print finishing with a strong customer focus and leading edge innovation.

The company's new logo, specifically designed for the Duplo brand, is supported by the tag line ‘from print to documents,’ chosen to reflect the value that print finishing brings to the print production workflow. It also emphasizes the importance of innovative finishing solutions within traditional, digital and hybrid print environments.

For 33 years, Winona State University’s Print Shop had been using the same 30˝ power cutter. But when the shop upgraded its prepress and press operations last summer, Supervisor Greg Johnson decided that a new cutter was the next logical step. “With a constant turnover of student employees, we not only needed a dependable machine, but one that was safe and easy to operate,” says Johnson. So in January the Winona, Minn.-based shop installed a new Heidelberg POLAR 78X cutter. The staff was using it within days of delivery. “The old cutter...did not have all the safety features that the POLAR has,” Johnson says.

The STERLING® DIGIPUNCH® is a new, economical high speed punch designed for on demand and commercial printers. It will make it’s premiere at Graph Expo 08.