What’s New in the Bindery?

Plenty of new bindery equipment was unveiled at the recent On Demand show.

THOUGH SOME major digital printing equipment vendors may have sat out this year's AIIM/On Demand Conference and Exposition in Philadelphia, all of the key bindery vendors were there, showing off their latest innovations. IPG spent time at all of their booths. Here's a look at what we saw:

Binding and Stitching

The Sterling Doublebinder, from Spiel Associates, was honored with the On Demand Best of Show award in the bindery category. The Doublebinder is a lay-flat perfect binder that reportedly binds as strong as PUR and will bind up to 300 books per hour and 2˝ thick with no messy cleanup. Books dry instantly. This new technology produces a lay-flat book by gluing not only the spine, but between the sheets.

Earning an honorable mention in the On Demand Best of Show awards was the New Bind America Adventure PUR perfect binder. It does not require an external glue system, and is able to run both hot-melt and PUR glue with no mechanical changeover. It is auto cleaning, and there is no need to purge the glue from the system. Bindery operators simply add glue when needed, cutting down on wasted glue. It can handle up to 200 binding cycles per hour with spine thicknesses from .0625˝ to 2˝.

New from Standard Finishing Systems was the Standard Horizon BQ-160 single-clamp perfect binder, equipped with an intuitive, icon-based color touchscreen. The BQ-160 can produce perfect binding, tape binding and pad binding at speeds up to 180 cycles per hour with books up to 1.1˝ thick. It features an electric book clamp, two-way notching, an efficient paper dust vacuum system, nipper height and tilt adjustment from the touchscreen, and a dynamic nipper table for auto book sizing.

Also new was the Standard Horizon StitchLiner 6000 digital high-speed saddle stitcher. Integrated with Hunkeler's UW6 unwinder and CS6 rotary cutter, it produces up to 6,000 booklets per hour, and offers in-line cover feeding.

Standard's new pXnet Bindery Control System was demon–strated through–out the booth. It features drag-and-drop functionality, real-time reporting of work in process, job schedul–ing, and JDF opera–bility. Job parameters can be entered at a central control console and then called up by any Horizon finisher on the network.

On top of all the digital printing technology on display in its booth, Océ also showed an innovative tape binder, the Océ DFS30. At the show it was demonstrated inline on the VarioPrint 6320, but it can be directly attached to any of Océ's medium- to high-volume black-and-white cut-sheet printers, including the Océ VarioPrint Ultra family. It offers quick setup and simple operation via an LCD control panel. The tape binder's capacity ranges from a minimum of 10 sheets to a maximum of 120 sheets (240 pages), with support for flush cut tabs. Card covers can be added. Tape strips are available in four colors: black, dark blue, red and white, with 100 strips in each quick-loading cartridge.

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