Mimeo Lounge

Binding: The Rodney Dangerfield of Printing

Posted on September 12, 2007 at 9:53am, written by Charlie Corr, VP Corporate Strategy

Binding is the Rodney Dangerfield of the printing industry. It never gets any respect. A veteran paper cutter once told me that in all his years nobody had ever come up to him and said, “Great cut Jim.”

The bindery has lagged the rest of the industry in terms of automation. The average finishing piece of equipment in the US is eight years old. While there is a standard for bindery automation (Universal Printer, Pre- and Postprocessing Interface UP³I) its existence is a widely held industry secret.

At Graph Expo, held in Chicago from September 8 to the 12th there were some interesting developments around binding and finishing. The following are some examples:

Laser Die Cutting – These devices eliminate the need for a die and allow precision cutting of paper or even foam core mounted wide format output. The favorite show output was a guitar. If you want a table tent with the Chicago skyline these devices make that output at a lower cost for on-demand printing. We expect the cost of these units to drop and it will take some time before they displace high production solutions.

Case Bound Books – Case bound (hard cover) books have been a craft for years. Automation addresses the need for thousands of books but if you only need one or a few books the choices have been lacking. Improvements were shown that more easily allow the production of low run length or run length one case bound books. As is often the case with new technology, it is most productive on standard sizes. The good news is that it is easier and less expensive to produce run lengths; the challenge is that more automation and resultant lower costs are still required to make low run length hard cover books even more attractive.

Bindery Automation - Almost all binding equipment today offers some automation to reduce the time required to set-up a job.  Many solutions incorporate bar code readers or cameras to assure accuracy. Some vendors are now integrating the data from these devices into a JDF workflow so that the entire workflow is more efficient. While few actually use the reporting feature usage is likely to increase as those buying are now asking for this capability even if they are not yet implementing it.

While Jim may never get the respect he deserves, the bindery is going more high tech and the results are higher accuracy, the ability to effectively produce low run lengths and lower costs.

Tags: bindery, binding, binding automation, case bound books, graph expo, laser die cutting, workflow