Printing 36pp A4 booklets with full bleed on DC 242 with a professional finisher

[AverroesDesign]

Hi guys, been a while since i last posted. Just experienced another issue, not so much an issue but most likely lack of experience on my machine

I know three ways of printing a 36pp brochure. Either print the booklets with auto duplex but no fold or stitching set and then 1. cut down the SRA3 sheets to A3 and use an external booklet maker. 2. cut sheets down to A3 and feed back into the machine to make the booklets (setting a blank file and running it through as grayscale to keep click charges low as poss) 3 i print the booklet with fold and stitch selected but attempt to trim afterwards

I have limitations with all options. 1. I dont have a separate booklet maker

2. it is more expensive due to extra click charges

3. sometimes looks like a dogs dinner when cutting across top and bottom of a booklet and furthermore, no two booklets look the same.

Likewise, what method do you guys use to print booklets with full bleed.

Cheers

 

[easiprint]

Do you do enough booklets to warrant buying an offline bookletmaker? Can be bought for a few hundred pounds second hand on ebay (That's how I got all 3 of mine).

We print collated on oversize A3 (SRA3) on our DC250. Then guillotine top and bottom to finished size (297mm). Then put them through our offline bookletmaker, and finally front edge trim on the guillotine. This allows you to front edge trim to 210mm to give proper size A3, and gives the best possible look to the finished booklets in my opinion.

If it were me, I would seriously look at getting a second hand bookletmaker from somewhere like ebay. We have the professional finisher on our DC250, but very very rarely use it.

Simon
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[AverroesDesign]

Hi Simon, I dont really do a vast amount of booklets to be honest otherwise I would have invested in a booklet maker.

Regarding trimming on the guillotine, due to the spine having play do you think you can get all the booklets all round square at 210 by 297. I tried this and some booklets were a few mm + or -

cheers

 

[easiprint]

No, never had much luck at trimming folded booklets top and bottom. The spine always causes problems with trimming this way giving non-square booklets whenever I have tried it, hence I always trim now before putting through the bookletmaker. The only trim I do on the guillotine after they have been folded is the front edge to get rid of the creep problem. Whilst the professional finisher does a good job for non bleed booklets, I don't think there is a successful way of producing booklets with bleed on it.

 

[AverroesDesign]

could you recommend a decent booklet maker, something not to expensive but one that is capable of doing jobs such as 100 run booklets

 

[geoman]

Two questions:

1. What "professional" finisher is it? Light Production or the other one?

2. What stock are you printing onto?

 

[AverroesDesign]

i have the professional finisher and i think the next one up is called the production finisher.

Id class mine as light, simple single fold, saddle stitch and collate

the stock in this case was 110 presentation paper

 

[easiprint]

I'm in the UK, not sure where you are, but I have three bookletmakers, all from ebay, and all for less than £200 each. This allows me to have one at A4, and two at A5 so when I get my monthly village newsletters, I can have two machines plodding through them.

The ones I have are:

1 - Takofold - cost me £150 a year or so ago on ebay.
2 - Duplo DBM50 - cost me £200 a couple of months ago on ebay.
3 - Oce 80 - cost me £50 last month on ebay.

The Foldnak models are also very good, and come up cheap from time to time.

Although all old and cheap, they all do a fantastic job. This Sa****ay I done a run of 1500 A5 16pp booklets in about 2 hours followed by 600 32pp A4's in just over an hour. I can get through 100 A5's in about 10 minutes.

I would recommend checking ebay every now and then until the right machine comes up.

 

[AverroesDesign]

Hi buddy, I am from West Yorkshire

Is there a a booklet maker which allows for A5 and A4 or even variable size

 

[easiprint]

Hi,

Yes, they will all do A6 to A4 booklets, and anything in between. Very easy to change between each size. I'm just lazy and have three so I leave mine setup ready to run!

Simon

 

[AverroesDesign]

Lol easy way to put it i suppose,

Btw how many clicks on average do you hit a month if you dont mind me asking

 

[easiprint]

We are not a high user of digital clicks each month - probably around 40,000 a month colour and then around 200,000 mono. We do a lot of monthly magazines with mono inners and colour covers. We also have an old AB Dick single colour litho we run all day on forms and leaflets.

Simon

 

[AverroesDesign]

What?? 40k colour clicks and your not busy

ive done less than that in over a year. But mind you 1 click for me pays off 1 third of my service charge a month.

How do you get so much traffic on your machine, its crazy

 

[easiprint]

I know where you are coming from. When we first took on a digital press about 18 months ago, I had to sign a minimum click of 2000 per month, and I worried me how I was ever going to get that many clicks every month. I had a couple of short months at the beginning, but we have tailored our business to fast turnaround leaflets and booklets, and our monthly volumes have shot up, and now our average job is 2000 clicks. I still do not have the volumes I would like as the machine is not running solidly as I would like, but we are moving in the right direction.

 

[AverroesDesign]

I know where you are coming from. When we first took on a digital press about 18 months ago, I had to sign a minimum click of 2000 per month, and I worried me how I was ever going to get that many clicks every month. I had a couple of short months at the beginning, but we have tailored our business to fast turnaround leaflets and booklets, and our monthly volumes have shot up, and now our average job is 2000 clicks. I still do not have the volumes I would like as the machine is not running solidly as I would like, but we are moving in the right direction.

that us great stuff buddy, in my case i refused a commitments package but demanded low click charges, they must have had a bad patch in sales that month so agreed.

But I so wish to try and up my click charges,