Page 48 - Print21 Jan-Feb 2020

Finishing
Automating
for a strong finish
As digital printing continues to grow and evolve, digital finishing equipment is right there beside it. Whether in- line or offline, automated cut-sheet finishing is a staple (to coin a phrase) of any print house worth the paper it prints on. Jake Nelson examines the latest in finishing technology and what printers should look for.
Finishing equipment from manufacturers such as Horizon, Heidelberg, Duplo, Multigraf, CP Bourg, Polar, Stahl, Watkiss, Plockmatic,
Morgana, MBO, and Herzog & Heymann offer printers a broad range of options when it comes to automating their finishing.
Choosing the correct finishing equipment is paramount to sustainability of profit margins
and future orders, says Nathan Broughton, national product manager at Print & Pack, which distributes MBO high-speed folding machines
as well as Herzog & Heymann pharmaceutical leaflet folders.
“Many printing companies focus their attention primarily on the printing machines and overlook the finishing equipment requirements. This ideology is the foundation of unexpected manufacturing costs and poor service to the end customer.
“An invoice is never paid until
the job is finished, and it must be finished to a high standard of quality. The quality of the finished product is the measure the customer will use to assess the standard of the printing company. With the right finishing machinery, print companies will certainly improve their bottom line,” he says.
Richard Timson, managing director of Heidelberg Australia, which sells Polar cutters and Stahl folders, emphasises the need for compact
and robust equipment that will last through years of use.
“Digital printers can do a multitude of inline finishing with their digital devices. However, once the volumes increase, the process becomes more industrial; higher volume cutting and folding then needs more industrial equipment for throughput and reliability,” he says.
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Bernie Robinson, managing director at Currie Group, says finishing has moved from labour- intensive to highly automated.
“The latest generation of Horizon solutions offer minimum downtime and high productivity with minimal input. The move to Internet
of Things, shown at the recent ThinkSmart Factory in Japan, is the way forward,” he says.
According to Jimmy Nguyen, national product manager at Quadient (formerly Neopost), printers should embrace automated finishing solutions, as that is where cost savings on labour can be found.
“An invoice is never paid until the job is finished, and it must be finished to a high standard of quality.”
– Nathan Broughton, Print and Pack
“If you buy equipment that requires you to manually stand there, you’re not saving much
time. Versatile equipment is also important, as well as the quality of the finished goods – most machines can do the same job, but if the work isn’t smooth, they should consider another solution,” he says.
New Horizons for Currie Group
Horizon finishing solutions, supplied in Australia and New Zealand by Currie Group, have seen developments in both the various units themselves and in the way they integrate into the print plant.
At drupa, visitors to the Horizon booth will see the company's developments in IoT or Internet
of Things (see separate feature on ThinkSmart Factory), which aims to harness the power of the internet to
connect
and deliver
new levels of
production efficiencies.
IoT is on track to have
a huge impact in print – on everywhere, in fact – and Horizon is one of the first out of the blocks to harness its power.
Horizon also continues to develop its products themselves. Back in August at PrintEx, Currie Goup launched the Horizon StitchLiner Mark III, its first upgrade of the
best selling saddlestitcher in seven years. Bernie Robinson says, “The Stitchliner Mark III is going well in the local market. It was interesting
at the ThinkSmart Factory in Japan, where it was seen with a robot between it and the BQ-480 perfect binder, and another robot between it and the HT-300 three knife trimmer.”
The StitchLiner Mark III comes with new features, including all direction jogging, a new three knife trimmer, and a longer plough fold.
Robinson says, “The new Horizon StitchLiner Mark III will run a Horizon HOF-400 feeder unit with
a CF-400 cover feeder, and will
allow printers to do an A4 landscape booklet which is stitched, folded, and three-way trimmed in one pass. It will take both digital and traditional offset work.”
Finishing from the B2 HP Indigo 12000 HD Digital Press can be inline.
“The Horizon SmartStacker will take a B2-sized sheet from the printer, cut it four times in one direction and seven cuts in the other direction, remove blank sheets,
and stack everything into a book block ready to go straight onto the perfect binder,” he says. From the SmartStacker, a Sawyer robot will carry the book blocks to a Horizon BQ-480 full-clamp perfect binder.