Too Much Static for Collating

[PrintingTeam]

Hi,

We are currently printing a job for one of our customers, the job is a 5.5" x 17" 20 page, saddle stitch booklet, 4/4, on 100# gloss text. We printed it on our Xerox 5000 and the static coming off each sheet is unbearable for our Duplo System 5000 Collator to handle.

Solutions we have tried:

1. Jog each pile and use anti-static spray.
2. Tape Bounty anti-static sheets on each feeder.

We have looked up a couple of solutions, here they are:

1. Buy anti-static string and attach it to the rolls that feed each sheet
2. Air ionizer to remove the static
3. Ionized jogger

We are looking for more household solutions because we really don't want to invest in the solutions we looked up. This is a problem we rarely have.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dabob]

where are you geographically, in my experience low humidity greatly increases static problems you might think about a humidifier if your humidity is below 25 or 30% RH.

 

[PrintingTeam]

We are in Canada, to be more specific (the Greater Toronto Area).
Our humidity is at 36-38%, which is about average for us this time of year.
But for Xerox standards, it's a but low. Xerox says, they need humidity to be 40-50% for optimal results. We have a small humidifier that isn't currently running and that would have helped a bit.

One observation we made was when the print was coming out of the Xerox 5000 there was not much static on the sheets, but once the sheets cooled down for 5-10 minutes, the pages got more static on them.

That is why we started to use the anti-static spray on small lifts for the collator. Since the collator is shooting out air to lift up the sheets, it was making all the bottom sheets on the lift become really staticy, thus it was missing sheets or picking up doubles.

We are only have a few more books left. I will let my boss know that humidity has a significant factor on page static.

Thanks for you help RH,
Michael

 

[atomhouse]

When we had our 5000, I had the same problem... I ended up taking two pieces of tinsel (not the kind you put on your christmas tree) from our big folders out in the pressroom and attaching them to the metal piece on the end directly above the output tray, and had it hang down so it would hit the paper.

This seemed to help a bit, but still wasn't 100% static free.

 

[PrintingTeam]

We are definitely going to have to give that a try. I remember my boss saying he uses tinsel on our folder in the shop, but for some reason we didn't end up trying that.

Thanks for the advice Atomhouse,
Michael

 

[Craig]

Give the static string a try. We use it on our folder to stop the ribbon effect on the output tray, works like a charm.