Best Booklet Maker

[lkr]

We are looking to buy a booklet maker. We're considering the Horizon VAC100 or the Duplo (Bell and Howell) DemandWorks DBM 120.

Does anyone have experience with either of these? Or can you recommend an alternative?

Thanks!

 

[Craig]

The best booklet maker... the one that works for you! Really depends on what your needs are.

 

[lkr]

OK, I'll be more specific.

We need a booklet maker that will collate up to 20 sheets, able to bind booklets from 4x6 up to 8.5x11 finished size, with face trimming. We need it to be able to handle digital and offset origin sheets. We need it to be able to handle up to 100lb. cover stock for the covers (scoring, preferably with a square back option). Our booklet orders range between 100 and 5000, but the average is probably 500 to 1000.

Is that enough information?

 

[lfelton]

OK, I'll be more specific.

We need a booklet maker that will collate up to 20 sheets, able to bind booklets from 4x6 up to 8.5x11 finished size, with face trimming. We need it to be able to handle digital and offset origin sheets. We need it to be able to handle up to 100lb. cover stock for the covers (scoring, preferably with a square back option). Our booklet orders range between 100 and 5000, but the average is probably 500 to 1000.

Is that enough information?

We use the high end Duplo vacuum collators in a system 5000 configuration and they are extremely good. Expensive, but good. The DBM-120 is the entry level Duplo bookletmaker and you can connect that on line to a face trimmer. I've never used a Horizon system, but they have a good reputation. Watkiss also make various collator / bookletmaker combinations. They're a bit cheaper and more compact if space is an issue. We liked Duplo & Horizon better when we are evaluating options, but Watkiss have been around for a long time, so must be making customers happy. Nagel also make booklet makers that can be integrated with collators (Uchida??) and you can also get a face trimmer I think. Nagel are very much "entry level" machines, but good quality IMO (we keep one for odds and ends and it just keeps on ticking). There's a couple of other manufacturers, but those are the main ones I think. Duplo and Horizon are the only ones with options for 3-knife trimmers, but not at the level of machine you are looking at.

Hope that helps.

Also (I keep on thinking of more!) Bourg make booklet makers, but they seem about as popular as having teeth pulled. Don't know why, maybe just a country specific thing. Final one; Plockmatic make entry level booklet makers as do a company called KAS (I've no experience of either).

 

[rlarmor]

Best Booklet Maker

You might look at the CP Bourg MBE it stitches, folds, face trims and has a book press built into flaten out the book for packaging more books to a carton. I've seen the unit in action and it is good for either digital or traditional offset.

 

[cosmo]

we have a horizon spf20, with 2 vac 100 towers, its a good setup, stay away from the bourg & duplo stitchers they are cheap and nasty.

 

[lfelton]

we have a horizon spf20, with 2 vac 100 towers, its a good setup, stay away from the bourg & duplo stitchers they are cheap and nasty.

I have no experience of Bourg machines, but you are talking total rubbish about the Duplos. We have had various systems over the last 5 years and currently have a System 5000 (plus other Duplo machines). We put a lot of digital and litho jobs through them every single day of the week with a very high level of reliability. I can hear the SFT line humming along at 5,000 brochures an hour from where I'm sitting in my office right now. That's a pretty new machine, we've had it for about 4 months and it only has about half a million up on it. But I can tell you how many break downs we've had on it. None, zip, nada.

Sorry to rant, but "drive by" bulls**t postings annoy me.

 

[Craig]

Sorry to rant, but "drive by" bulls**t postings annoy me.

LOL

Thanks for the smile you put on my face!

 

[cosmo]

lfelton: We had a duplo booklet maker, it was an older model, probably around 1998-2000 and i can tell you it was cheap and nasty, duplo must have picked up there game which is good.

Maybe you should keep your personal attacks to yourself.

"Sorry to rant, but "drive by" bulls**t postings annoy me. "

dont get too upset ya big girl.

 

[fire11]

Duplo 5000 vs. Horizon Vac 100 & SPF/FC-200A

Duplo 5000 vs. Horizon Vac 100 & SPF/FC-200A

I'm in a very similar position and am stuck comparing two very capable machines. Can anyone give me any particular things to look at, check out or compare? We do some traditional short-run work from our color copiers, medium runs from copiers and presses and have several orders in-house right now for 20-50M and even have one order in-house right now for 100M, although those are not as common for us. Anyone have feedback for me, please? We'll be making our decision in the next two weeks and will be buying one of these for sure so I'd love to hear any thoughts!

 

[CSimpson]

I'm in a very similar position and am stuck comparing two very capable machines. Can anyone give me any particular things to look at, check out or compare? We do some traditional short-run work from our color copiers, medium runs from copiers and presses and have several orders in-house right now for 20-50M and even have one order in-house right now for 100M, although those are not as common for us. Anyone have feedback for me, please? We'll be making our decision in the next two weeks and will be buying one of these for sure so I'd love to hear any thoughts!

I am comparing the same machines and this is where I am at in my evaluation process. Both machines are ultra reliable and apparently both feed systems work great.

Horizon Pro's
I like that the trimmings can go in a paper box instead of a dedicated box within the machine that you have to dump. I is just easier to kick the box out of the way and put an empty one down.
The large full color LCD is much nicer than Duplo's small mono-color display.
I like that corner stiching goes to the conveyor, and I beleive it can corner stich a greater amount of sheets than the Duplo.
I like that the stich heads move instead of the guides. I kinda think this will create a more accurate stich but I have seen nothing to actually prove that.

Duplo Pro's
It is quieter than the Horizon.
The paper path is all at the top of the machine, so it will be easier to remove jams on this machine.
Similar configurations tended to be several thousand dollars less than the Horizon.
You cannot crash the machine by forgeting to remove guides when changing set-ups because there is nothing to remove or add on the Duplo. For me, this is probably the deciding factor.

Overall I do not think you can make a bad choice when evaluating these two machines. I think it comes down to which fits your shop more though feature and familarity of brand, which dealer are you more comfortable with when it comes to service, and if your interested in adding additional feature in the future like an inline SCC, single sheet insertion, or tabbing for mailing purposes.

 

[fire11]

Thanks so much for your help CSimpson! I've found many similar things in carefully reviewing them and getting information from a variety of sources. My initial conclusion was that the Horizon was noisy and "mechanical-sounding" which couldn't be good long-term...but people say they're ultra-reliable. Also, while they have very different approaches to moving paper into the machine, they both seem to do it very quickly and reliably...which is the key to much of this. It looks like the Duplo is a little more affordable in it's complete model but the Horizon seems to have many more options to configure the machine to do particular jobs a bit better or more efficiently. Most of this appears like minor variances and can't wait to see how the bids come in...either way, we're going to be 1000 times better off with either one of them!

Any other ideas, gang?

 

[CSimpson]

What did you wind up getting? Are you happy with it?

 

[fire11]

New Horizon Owners!

New Horizon Owners!

CSimpson,

Thanks for your very timely follow-up on this thread. We received shipment of the machine on Monday morning and finished training on it yesterday...what a fast and furious week it's been! We got the Horizon system with two of the Vac-100 towers, the SPF-200A stitcher, FC-20 face trimmer, LC-200 long exit conveyor and PK-30 batch kicker and are extremely pleased. For us, this one came down to price since we're a state agency and this was a competitive bid situation. I know that usually Duplo will win a price war but each market is a little different and two vendors in a small market is healthy for us all. I think that we clearly got the better machine for our needs in the long run.

When comparing these machines, take a close look at them running a variety of jobs, the easy ones and the hard ones, long runs and short ones. Consider that they'll all break so what's the servicing company's ability to provide service...but also how easy is it to troubleshoot the machinery. I think that the Horizon system has the clear lead in operator maintainability, software support and planned upgrades as well. As an example, the Duplo comes with one blade and it takes a service call to change it for sharpening...whereas the Horizon comes with two knives, your operator can easily change it and send it to your sharpener. To me, this seems like they're better prepared for me to be productive in the long run.

Yesterday morning before the trainer arrived for the second day of training, my operator setup and started running a job that took him a full week on our old friction-fed Duplo unit and it was finished before lunch so we're very pleased! After lunch, he ran a collating job that had 19 sheets of specialty stock and was 4CP on all...a job that the old machine would have taken two passes, a hand-gather and would have marked up the edge of every sheet so it was a very good day for us!

If you've got specific questions or concerns about it, I'd be glad to discuss them and wish you the best of luck with your decision. Also, I'd highly recommend a quick trip to Horizon's demo facility in Andover, MA. We went there for a one-day demo and were blown away by their product line, eagerness to earn our business, commitment to the market and entire operation so I'd highly recommend that as well!

Good luck,

Chuck

 

[Ironside]

Looking at the same machine

Looking at the same machine

Fire11

I am looking at the same machine, although I received pricing on the Bourg BME and the Duplo 5000. I guess looking at the machines my inclination is to go with the Standard same config you got. However trying to come to terms with the folding quality. Any issues achieving a good fold? I ran a sample job on one about a year ago and the operator didn't know how to increase the folding pressure, I hate the pillow in the fold. The BME has some sort of feature that deals with this but I am not completely sold on CP Bourg, a much smaller company and I do have some concerns about machine service, reliability so on.

The duplo machine I demo'd in the show two years ago, nice machine but didn't seem as rugged as the standard.

Its been about a month since your last post and wanted to see if you are still comfortable with your decision.

Thanks