Booklet Maker Saves Time, Boosts Quality at Westat

Producing booklets has gotten a whole lot easier at Westat since the employee-owned research firm’s in-plant installed a new Duplo System 5000 collating/booklet making system.

“We purchased the booklet maker because we produce a lot of booklets, and not all of our machines had finishing capabilities on them,” reports Ezra Schneider, manager of the eight-employee Reproduction and Copy Services department.

The system offers easy changeovers, he adds, and delivers saddle-, side- or corner-stitched jobs at speeds of up to 5,000 booklets per hour. It handles output from the Rockville, Md.-based in-plant’s array of Xerox equipment, which includes a Color 1000, a Color 700 and two DocuTechs: a 6180 and a 6155.

“We take the output from all of our four Xerox presses and keep them running at full speed, while the System 5000 does the folding, stitching and trimming,” Schneider explains. “The System 5000 also makes it easy to take a color cover from the Xerox 700 press and combine it with a black-and-white booklet produced on the other presses.”

In addition to booklets, the operation is now producing brochures and catalogs on the System 5000, and has been able to bring more of these jobs in-house. What has also impressed Schneider about the System 5000 is its ability to do square-spine binding, which resembles a perfect bind.

“This allows your booklet to lay flatter, with a much neater look on a greater number of pages,” he notes. “The booklet will also sit on the shelf a lot nicer.”

According to Kevin Kane, supervisor of Westat’s Reproduction and Copy Services department, the System 5000 has been a major time-saver for the in-plant.

“If we need to run a large black-and-white job, we would run those on two DocuTechs, and then finish it,” he says. “So instead of tying up one machine for eight hours, we would run it on two and get it done in four hours.”

The machine’s three-knife trimmer and four stitcher heads have also been a bonus, says Kane.

“When we need to produce a thick book with a square fold on it, we can put four stitches in there and it will hold the pages a lot tighter than if it only had two,” he says.

Prior to the System 5000, Westat was using GBC, coil, perfect and VeloBind machines (which it still operates). The in-plant currently uses a VeloBind for the projects it produces for clients that want greater security in the binding of their documents.

“While we use the System 5000 to fold and staple projects, these other methods allow us to meet the needs of our clients and provide a greater offering to them,” concludes Schneider.