Standard Finishing Systems

After more than 10 years of service, the two-tower collator/booketmaker at Ken Maley’s in-plant was showing its age. Though it had served the Monroe Two-Orleans Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) very well, it was increasingly down for maintenance, and repair costs were mounting.

The University of Delaware's Graphic Communications department has installed a Xerox iGen4 digital color press and a 20-station Standard 5500 Stitchliner.

Standard Finishing Systems has opened a new 17,000-square-foot National Customer Demonstration and Training Center at its Andover, Mass., corporate headquarters. It features nearly every Standard solution: three-knife trimmers, folders, saddle stitchers, perfect binders and much more. High-speed finishing for production digital printers is demonstrated with in-line saddle stitching and folding solutions.

To help you pick the perfect binder for your in-plant, and get the best performance out of it, we consulted the folks who know this technology the best.

By now, JDF (Job Definition Format) has sunk its proverbial teeth into the prepress and press departments of the printing process, and no one can argue the benefits of adopting this technology in these areas of print production. However, for a true end-to-end JDF workflow, the technical innovation can’t stop at the press—it must continue into the bindery. So where are we in the pursuit of JDF-enabled bindery equipment? To find out, I asked several leading bindery equipment manufacturers/distributors, and got some interesting information from those who responded. When asked whether customers are requesting JDF-enabled bindery equipment, the overwhelming response was “yes, but

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer wraps up his Drupa visit with a look at bindery and digital printing equipment, inclding new ink-jet presses. (He also pokes fun at some odd contraptions he stumbles upon.)

THOUGH MOST of the press conferences and “big news” at Drupa centered on digital printing, innovations in bindery and finishing were no less prevalent. In fact, many of them sprang from the very digital printing trends that overshadowed them. As digital printing speeds have increased, bindery equipment has also gotten faster, with vastly improved automation and simplified touch-screen controls to make them even easier to set up. JDF compatibility is becoming more common in bindery equipment, allowing devices to be preset using production data. Demands for higher-quality printed products have led bindery vendors to improve their paper-handling techniques. Folds look better on the latest

The Xerox Production Systems Group presented Partner of the Year awards to 16 business partners for their continued contributions to Xerox, its customers and the printing industry. Rochester Software Associates was presented with the 2007 Production Systems Group Software Partner of the Year Award for providing customers in vertical markets, such as healthcare and education, with solutions that improve and enhance print production workflows. Additional Software Partner of the Year Awards were presented to: • Atlas Software - Variable Information Partner of the Year • Avanti Computer Systems - Business Management / MIS Partner of the Year • Elixir - Data Transformation Partner of

New Bindery System Boosts Throughput for School District Since 1981, Colorado Springs School District 11’s Production Printing Department had been using a 14-bin Bourg collator to create basic note pads, carbonless forms and other items that didn’t require folding or stitching. “It became increasingly difficult to find repair parts for our 26-year-old collator,” explains Joe Morin, manager, Production Printing. “And, as our customer requirements change, we are seeing more requests for full-color booklets, programs and marketing pieces, making the need for a more sophisticated inline finishing system apparent.” So last summer the in-plant purchased a Standard Horizon SPF-200A stitcher/folder with three VAC-100 10-bin towers and

WHILE HARDWARE and software manufacturers have yet to devise a tonic that can cure the hung-over stitcher operator, many aspects of postpress efficiency have been adequately addressed...depending upon whom you ask. Some feel we have made leaps and bounds en route to shortening the after-press process; others believe we’re still being short changed. We’ve asked a group of industry experts their opinion on the progress made in automating postpress processes. Most agree that some areas have been bolstered, but they don’t agree on which areas. “I’d say binding, folding and stitching equipment have drastically improved to the point where we have eliminated a