Booklet Making

[Muddy]

So I just landed a nice new contract to produce 8500, 64 page self cover books once per month. It's going to be produced on 50lb uncoated text. It needs to be collated, stitched and trimmed in a two day period. It would need to handle 16, 4 page forms.

I had a local trade bindery price me at $650 per month to finish this from my unfolded sigs. For a reason I won't get into here they have decided to pull "conflict of interest" and will not do this work for me.

My question is for $650 per month will I be able to purchase my own bookletmaker (they were using a Mueller I probably just need a bookletmaker)? I need the knife trimmer option as well. I don't mind buying good used gear either. My math makes me think this is a $30000 finance if I want to keep the payment to $650 over a five year lease.

Can any of you offer an opinion or advice?

 

[DCWack]

Have you considered outsourcing the entire project?

Have you considered outsourcing the entire project?

It could be done as 4-16pg sigs more economically. Please feel free to contact me if interested.

Regards,
Dave
email: [email protected]

 

[Happyprinter]

There are alot of options available to you especially in this buyers market. Try LCE Graphics, located in Florida. They carry a large variety of used machines including Duplo, Horizon etc... A good twin tower air feed unit with trimmer would easily handle your job. And the plus side of course is not having to rely on anyone else to fullfil your work.

 

[OkiTech]

Hi, is job b/w or color? If it is b/w I have Ricoh 2090 digital copier with Booklet maker / trimmer in-line, something like this seems like it could run the job. Whole system run me about $5000-6000, it can produce about 70-80 booklets like this in 1 hour (printed + stitched) so depends on what is total time for the order it can be a good option.

 

[lfelton]

Muddy - Horizon & Duplo both make great high end booklet making systems, which could deal easily with this and you may be able to find a used system within your price range.

One thing to watch out for is that if the job is currently run on a Muller or similar then you need to make sure that the finish achieved on the booklet maker is acceptable to your customer. Remember that on a Muller, the pages will have been pre-folded into signatures, which makes for a "tighter" book. If your 64PP is a small book, or thin like a travel guide, then books made on a booklet maker might be a little too "springy" for your client. I'm sure you'll sort that out, but it's worth bearing in mind when deciding how to proceed with the job.

I guess DCWack is touting for business (nothing wrong with that DCW) and I'll just expand on that point, as it may not be clear to some. If your job is B&W then the point is moot, but if it's COLOUR throughout then in all likelyhood the job needs to be put onto a B1 or web to be run cost effectively. If you're thinking of printing it digitally for instance, there's no doubt that you could sub the whole lot out (and get a much better job) for a lot less than your click+paper costs. If you have a decent B2, you'd keep it in house, but I'm guessing from your sig description that you are talking SRA3. As I said, if B&W then it's a different equation.

 

[ondemandbindery]

So I just landed a nice new contract to produce 8500, 64 page self cover books once per month. It's going to be produced on 50lb uncoated text. It needs to be collated, stitched and trimmed in a two day period. It would need to handle 16, 4 page forms.

I had a local trade bindery price me at $650 per month to finish this from my unfolded sigs. For a reason I won't get into here they have decided to pull "conflict of interest" and will not do this work for me.

My question is for $650 per month will I be able to purchase my own bookletmaker (they were using a Mueller I probably just need a bookletmaker)? I need the knife trimmer option as well. I don't mind buying good used gear either. My math makes me think this is a $30000 finance if I want to keep the payment to $650 over a five year lease.

Can any of you offer an opinion or advice?

I have never seen a 16 pocket Muller Saddle stitcher. So they are going to do multiple passes. Honestly, this was either quoted wrong or they are giving their work away. With all the folding and passes they will be losing money. This will definitely be a bulky book through a standard collator unless it has some type of pressing unit to compress the book. Just be careful because some customers do not like that. My advice is maybe look for a shop who will do it for you turn key right now. Maybe looking ahead try to locate some more work similar to this and then that would justify buying some type of stitcher to do this. If you plan on keeping it as a 4 page signature format the obvious choice will be a tower collator with face trimmer. Some of my customer have collators they do certain book work on but for something like this they will typically outsource it for a tighter book.

Good luck,

 

[RGPW17100]

Booklet makers typically only go to 40 pages. Going to a 64 page book you would need an extra collating tower. As mentioned going with 16 signatures will make for a book that wont stay closed. Even if you ran this as 8 pagers that would be 68,000 right angle folds which could take about 8 hours to fold then the saddle stitching. My guess is a holding staple would have to be used on a couple of sigs then re collated. The reason your person did not honor their quote is the probably either did not add folding or the extra collating pass or both. No matter what you decide to do I doubt anyone will touch that job for that price.

 

[Muddy]

Thanks for everyone's input.

The way I see this is as long as you have two right angles for your folder you should be able to fold my 16 page signatures (20" x 28" sheet size).

I will take your advice about a booklet maker and the "springiness" of the finished piece. I met with another finisher yesterday and they have agreed to fold, stitch and trim for approximately 10% mor ethan my original quote so I can live with that.

Thanks again for your input