Three solutions 1. Horizon, a high-end system and Xerox, which has long-term cooperation in sheet-fed printing and binding, launched the first on-demand printing automatic binding system. The biggest difficulty in the workflow is how to get the cover from an independent press and pack it on the corresponding book block. The Horizon system consists of the Xerox Docu Tech6180 digital press, which prints the book block, and the DocuColor 40 digital press, which prints the cover (without cover). The book block was fed into the Horizon IF-340 collector. After the collection was completed, the color covers printed on the DocuColor 40 were entered into the BQ-340X binding machine. The bound books move along the conveyor and finally enter the HT-30 three-sided cutter. From the time an order is placed from the customer to the completion of the book printing, no part of the product is touched by human hands.
The above system costs more than one million US dollars, the price of the produced books is also very expensive, and the cost of each book exceeds 5 US dollars. Furthermore, the Horizon BQ-340X binding machine requires a 15 second hold time to facilitate the drying of the hot melt adhesive. In short, there are still many problems to be solved in this system. In general, the printing speed is 240 books per hour, and the production process does not require manual operation. It should be said that this is a big improvement.
2. Horizon, a partner of Xerox, a web supply system, offers another stand-alone assembly line for printing the book. It uses the web-fed single-sheet feeder SF-4 to cut a 11-inch wide web into 8.5-inch by 11-inch single-sheet paper and feed it to DocuTech's delivery tray. This web-fed single sheet feeder has the advantage of having up to 40,000 sheets of continuous prints when changing paper rolls, but it does not belong to double-sided printing. The assembly line has a break from where the printed book is printed. Horizon gathered BQ-440 binding machine, SL-40 conveyor/cooling tower and HT-70 three-side cutter to form a finishing line. These units add up to a price of less than $200,000 and can print 1,000 books per hour. However, since an operator who manually feeds the book block needs to operate at a speed of 3.6 seconds to send a book, long hours of work can be very tiring. Of course, slowing down the gutter speed or rotating the book block by two operators can solve this problem.
3. Another partner of Xerox, the book processing factory, is CP Bourg, which showcased the Xerox Book Factory, the first book digital printing publishing solution using the Job Definition Format (JDF). (digitalbook publishing solution). JDF is a CIP3-based, Adobe-based print production format. A PDF file can be sent from a remote location using various media or formats. If the Xerox system supports the specified binding finishing options, the product becomes a finished product when the product comes out of the printing plant.
There are also two problems in this workflow. The system uses a sheet of paper with a length of eight sheets and the printed book is a short string. The cover of the book is not covered and it is easily damaged. The cover used by the Bourg machine should be filmed before binding to ensure that the books are not easily damaged. However, some of the binding materials used for the covers are of good quality and do not need to be coated to ensure the quality of the binding.
Laminating, Stapling and Cutting 1. The Orbit2000 laminating machine with single-sided or double-sided film-coated GBC is compatible with Xerox's roll-fed paper popularization book printing production line. It can cover the surface of the cover paper with a nylon heatset film. After the film is covered, in order to prevent the cover from wrinkling, it should try to break the fibers on the back cover of the paper. This single-sided film solution has a disadvantage in that the feed of the cover must be continuous. If the cover supply is interrupted, the adhesive on the plastic film sticks to the roller. Nylon is patented by Luis Joson, an engineer at GBC 23 years ago. The nylon material is not very soft and has hygroscopicity similar to that of paper. The use of nylon material results in a flatter cover than standard polyethylene and polypropylene materials. Polyethylene and polypropylene materials are more susceptible to warm air. According to GBC, the formation of polyethylene plastic covers can only last 1-3 weeks.
Some people have asked why the cover of a book is only coated on one side. It stands to reason that double-sided lamination seems to be better than one-sided laminating decoration, but if this is the case, it will be difficult for the glue to stick to the spine when the book block is attached to the cover. Someone used abrasive and chemical methods to solve the problem of double-sided film covering, and used this method to process a book introducing recipes.
2. The single-sided knife cutter Marsh Technologies of Chesterfield presented a new product at GraphExpo. It uses a single-sided knife cutter to cut the three sides of the book. The advantage of this is that no clips are pressed into the uncured hot melt adhesive. This avoids the need for a 15-second pause in the aforementioned Horizon and Bourg solutions. Replacing the three-sided knife cutter with a single-sided knife-cutting machine is slower (about 30 seconds), but it also keeps up with the printing speed of the printing press.
3. Hardcover binding On-DemandMachinery has been developing and producing small hardcover gutters for several years. The system sells for about $70,000 and can bind 100 hardcover books per hour. Among Xerox's hard case binding products, the most attractive is the binding cloth that can be printed on a color laser printer at a price of 75-80 cents per sheet. In addition, ICGHolliston's DigiTex offers hard cover materials with incredible toner adhesion that is better than any covers we have seen for on-demand printing. Using this material as the cover of the book can guarantee the quality of the book even if it is not coated.
4. The hot stamping machine Flesher's Richard Bruce introduced the Premerefoil-stamplettering, which is computer-controlled to meet user requirements. The machine is based on a giant IBM electric typewriter and is suitable for hot stamping on the hard cover of cover book cover and other short version products. Another Powis Parker company introduced the FoilFast, a stamping machine based on the AlpsMD series of heat-activated cartridge color printers. The advantage of the Powis Parker hot stamping system is that it is not limited to hot stamping of the text, but also hot stamping of computer images. However, this system is used to stamp imprints that are not in recessed materials such as traditional stamping machines or Flesher stamping machines.
The small-scale printing enterprise's decentralized small-scale system model generally uses smaller on-demand printing equipment, such as Sprout On Demand Machine, T/R System, and ENTRE. Since decentralized small-scale print-on-demand printing systems are still in their infancy, some development companies are not only system providers but also print production operations.
The decentralized small system is suitable for installation in small street printing companies, so its equipment (mainly the binding equipment) must be a relatively small, single-working machine that can manually unload the book block and cover. There are many fast-printing and bookbinding machines that cost between $4,000 and $20,000.
The difficulty in popularizing bookbinding is how to bind books with thick spine thickness. Although some bookbinding equipment manufacturers claim to be able to bind books up to 1.5 inches in thickness, operators have found that books that are thicker than 1 inch are actually cut. There will be difficulties when cutting. Although some machines have the ability to bind thick books, their prices are so prohibitive that some fast-printing departments are uncomfortable.
As for the bookbinding after cutting, most small-scale printing companies use single-sided knife cutters and manual operations. Many small desktop cutters have different levels of automation, but not all automation is great.
Conclusion In the high-end market, some large manufacturers that develop and produce high-end on-demand printing equipment claim that they have provided perfect on-demand printing systems, claiming that they have become masters of on-demand printing. Océ Corporation's Demandstream, IBM's Info Print, Xerox's Docu Tech System and C. P. With the cooperation of Bourg, Horizon, Stralfors, Roll System and other ancillary equipment, it is possible to complete the work that was almost impossible for people 10 years ago. However, when using these devices, the unit cost of the product is still high. What is the best way to print and distribute high-end books remains to be explored. In addition, despite the fact that high-end products do have a high level of automation, in reality, many people still use manual binding and finishing. In the low-end market, many companies are looking for partners to develop new products with higher cost performance. It seems that on-demand printing still has a long way to go, and we look forward to the day when the real fully-automatic bookbinding and finishing will come. The experimental research in this area has been continuing. Significant progress has been made in hardcover binding materials and technology. I believe that new progress will soon be made.
The above system costs more than one million US dollars, the price of the produced books is also very expensive, and the cost of each book exceeds 5 US dollars. Furthermore, the Horizon BQ-340X binding machine requires a 15 second hold time to facilitate the drying of the hot melt adhesive. In short, there are still many problems to be solved in this system. In general, the printing speed is 240 books per hour, and the production process does not require manual operation. It should be said that this is a big improvement.
2. Horizon, a partner of Xerox, a web supply system, offers another stand-alone assembly line for printing the book. It uses the web-fed single-sheet feeder SF-4 to cut a 11-inch wide web into 8.5-inch by 11-inch single-sheet paper and feed it to DocuTech's delivery tray. This web-fed single sheet feeder has the advantage of having up to 40,000 sheets of continuous prints when changing paper rolls, but it does not belong to double-sided printing. The assembly line has a break from where the printed book is printed. Horizon gathered BQ-440 binding machine, SL-40 conveyor/cooling tower and HT-70 three-side cutter to form a finishing line. These units add up to a price of less than $200,000 and can print 1,000 books per hour. However, since an operator who manually feeds the book block needs to operate at a speed of 3.6 seconds to send a book, long hours of work can be very tiring. Of course, slowing down the gutter speed or rotating the book block by two operators can solve this problem.
3. Another partner of Xerox, the book processing factory, is CP Bourg, which showcased the Xerox Book Factory, the first book digital printing publishing solution using the Job Definition Format (JDF). (digitalbook publishing solution). JDF is a CIP3-based, Adobe-based print production format. A PDF file can be sent from a remote location using various media or formats. If the Xerox system supports the specified binding finishing options, the product becomes a finished product when the product comes out of the printing plant.
There are also two problems in this workflow. The system uses a sheet of paper with a length of eight sheets and the printed book is a short string. The cover of the book is not covered and it is easily damaged. The cover used by the Bourg machine should be filmed before binding to ensure that the books are not easily damaged. However, some of the binding materials used for the covers are of good quality and do not need to be coated to ensure the quality of the binding.
Laminating, Stapling and Cutting 1. The Orbit2000 laminating machine with single-sided or double-sided film-coated GBC is compatible with Xerox's roll-fed paper popularization book printing production line. It can cover the surface of the cover paper with a nylon heatset film. After the film is covered, in order to prevent the cover from wrinkling, it should try to break the fibers on the back cover of the paper. This single-sided film solution has a disadvantage in that the feed of the cover must be continuous. If the cover supply is interrupted, the adhesive on the plastic film sticks to the roller. Nylon is patented by Luis Joson, an engineer at GBC 23 years ago. The nylon material is not very soft and has hygroscopicity similar to that of paper. The use of nylon material results in a flatter cover than standard polyethylene and polypropylene materials. Polyethylene and polypropylene materials are more susceptible to warm air. According to GBC, the formation of polyethylene plastic covers can only last 1-3 weeks.
Some people have asked why the cover of a book is only coated on one side. It stands to reason that double-sided lamination seems to be better than one-sided laminating decoration, but if this is the case, it will be difficult for the glue to stick to the spine when the book block is attached to the cover. Someone used abrasive and chemical methods to solve the problem of double-sided film covering, and used this method to process a book introducing recipes.
2. The single-sided knife cutter Marsh Technologies of Chesterfield presented a new product at GraphExpo. It uses a single-sided knife cutter to cut the three sides of the book. The advantage of this is that no clips are pressed into the uncured hot melt adhesive. This avoids the need for a 15-second pause in the aforementioned Horizon and Bourg solutions. Replacing the three-sided knife cutter with a single-sided knife-cutting machine is slower (about 30 seconds), but it also keeps up with the printing speed of the printing press.
3. Hardcover binding On-DemandMachinery has been developing and producing small hardcover gutters for several years. The system sells for about $70,000 and can bind 100 hardcover books per hour. Among Xerox's hard case binding products, the most attractive is the binding cloth that can be printed on a color laser printer at a price of 75-80 cents per sheet. In addition, ICGHolliston's DigiTex offers hard cover materials with incredible toner adhesion that is better than any covers we have seen for on-demand printing. Using this material as the cover of the book can guarantee the quality of the book even if it is not coated.
4. The hot stamping machine Flesher's Richard Bruce introduced the Premerefoil-stamplettering, which is computer-controlled to meet user requirements. The machine is based on a giant IBM electric typewriter and is suitable for hot stamping on the hard cover of cover book cover and other short version products. Another Powis Parker company introduced the FoilFast, a stamping machine based on the AlpsMD series of heat-activated cartridge color printers. The advantage of the Powis Parker hot stamping system is that it is not limited to hot stamping of the text, but also hot stamping of computer images. However, this system is used to stamp imprints that are not in recessed materials such as traditional stamping machines or Flesher stamping machines.
The small-scale printing enterprise's decentralized small-scale system model generally uses smaller on-demand printing equipment, such as Sprout On Demand Machine, T/R System, and ENTRE. Since decentralized small-scale print-on-demand printing systems are still in their infancy, some development companies are not only system providers but also print production operations.
The decentralized small system is suitable for installation in small street printing companies, so its equipment (mainly the binding equipment) must be a relatively small, single-working machine that can manually unload the book block and cover. There are many fast-printing and bookbinding machines that cost between $4,000 and $20,000.
The difficulty in popularizing bookbinding is how to bind books with thick spine thickness. Although some bookbinding equipment manufacturers claim to be able to bind books up to 1.5 inches in thickness, operators have found that books that are thicker than 1 inch are actually cut. There will be difficulties when cutting. Although some machines have the ability to bind thick books, their prices are so prohibitive that some fast-printing departments are uncomfortable.
As for the bookbinding after cutting, most small-scale printing companies use single-sided knife cutters and manual operations. Many small desktop cutters have different levels of automation, but not all automation is great.
Conclusion In the high-end market, some large manufacturers that develop and produce high-end on-demand printing equipment claim that they have provided perfect on-demand printing systems, claiming that they have become masters of on-demand printing. Océ Corporation's Demandstream, IBM's Info Print, Xerox's Docu Tech System and C. P. With the cooperation of Bourg, Horizon, Stralfors, Roll System and other ancillary equipment, it is possible to complete the work that was almost impossible for people 10 years ago. However, when using these devices, the unit cost of the product is still high. What is the best way to print and distribute high-end books remains to be explored. In addition, despite the fact that high-end products do have a high level of automation, in reality, many people still use manual binding and finishing. In the low-end market, many companies are looking for partners to develop new products with higher cost performance. It seems that on-demand printing still has a long way to go, and we look forward to the day when the real fully-automatic bookbinding and finishing will come. The experimental research in this area has been continuing. Significant progress has been made in hardcover binding materials and technology. I believe that new progress will soon be made.
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