Digital Booklets - Inline or Offline

[ilovemedia]

I don’t understand what you mean CSimpson by it digitally destroying the book during folding. Could you explain more? Do you have pictures? Thanks!

 

[CSimpson]

The book pages are very slick when printed digitally with full coverage on coated paper. The Duplo first stitches the sheets together then attempts to fold all the sheets at one time through a set of rollers. The problem is the rollers only contact the outside sheet and in most cases this doesn't cause a problem; however, in this scenario there is not enough friction between the sheet to hold everything together. It rips the top page clean off the book in an attempt to fold it. This causes the timing of the trimmer to be off and whats left of the book gets cut in half.

In this case we have to stitch the book and eject them without folding, then we hand fold all of the books.

 

[arossetti]

This happens on our Standard also. Have you tried cleaning the rollers off with a little roll cleaner ie sure wash? We can adjust the amount of tension on the rollers with our Standard can you not do the same with the Duplo?

 

[lfelton]

What type of volume are you running? I have the same system and I hate it, tons of service issues. I am wondering if it is a volume issue or a lemon issue. For the record, I am running between 30,000 to 50,000 books per month.

Also if you run a job on gloss text with full coverage (colored background) digitally it destroys the book when it tries to fold it. This is due to the sheets being too slick and the way the machine folds. Have you encountered this problem?

@CSimpson

We have the 5000 as well and we're doing a lot more booklets than that a month, a lot of them on gloss (digital and litho), so a good comparison. We don't have that same issue at all. We have the machine serviced and the guys have a very strict operator maintenance schedule. IMO the Duplo operator training that we originally got (in fact on all Duplo equipment and we have a lot) was pretty poor, especially when compared with other vendors. Our main gripe with the system is the collator tower, specifically the mis / double feed sensing (the rest of the machine has been good). Even with the machine in tip top condition, certain jobs are a complete PITA on it. I've heard from other owners that they experience the same issues with Duplo towers. TBH I'm liking the Horizon kit in our factory a lot more these days, we installed a couple of machines about 18 months ago and apart from the (excellent) training and routine servicing, we haven't seen an engineer since!

 

[CSimpson]

This happens on our Standard also. Have you tried cleaning the rollers off with a little roll cleaner ie sure wash? We can adjust the amount of tension on the rollers with our Standard can you not do the same with the Duplo?

We can adjust the tension, but it has not solved that problem. Maybe a KM6501 creates a slicker print than most printers on coated paper, who knows.

@CSimpson

We have the 5000 as well and we're doing a lot more booklets than that a month, a lot of them on gloss (digital and litho), so a good comparison. We don't have that same issue at all. We have the machine serviced and the guys have a very strict operator maintenance schedule. IMO the Duplo operator training that we originally got (in fact on all Duplo equipment and we have a lot) was pretty poor, especially when compared with other vendors. Our main gripe with the system is the collator tower, specifically the mis / double feed sensing (the rest of the machine has been good). Even with the machine in tip top condition, certain jobs are a complete PITA on it. I've heard from other owners that they experience the same issues with Duplo towers. TBH I'm liking the Horizon kit in our factory a lot more these days, we installed a couple of machines about 18 months ago and apart from the (excellent) training and routine servicing, we haven't seen an engineer since!

What type operator maintenance are you doing and how often? Is the double detector on the Horizon far superior to that of the Duplo? Since you have both towers what are the pluses and minus of each in your opinion? Also are you doing mainly digital or offset work?

 

[Craig]

I will verify that a KM 6500 prints are slicker than snot. We do finishing for another shop with a 6500 and always have problems with their prints. It must be the toner that causes it.

 

[Toner4Brains]

Well the salesman talked a good game, as they do.

The salesman was almost 100% correct - there is a KM booklet maker that folds in 3 signature sets for most paper and assembles a folded book before stitching. There are 2 booklet makers available for the KM production boxes

- a small all-in-one type finisher that will saddle stitch 20 sheets, corner staple 50 sheets, and stack 2k on an exit tray. This finisher does the regular stack a whole set, staple it, and fold the stapled set type of saddle binding method. This was called the FS-607 on the C6500/C6501 and is now called the FS-612 for the C6000/C7000/C8000

- a larger modular saddle stitch unit that is a component within the professional finishing line, it requires a stacking source be added to it in order to print flat sheets and this unit will saddle stitch 50 sheets, do a 3 sheet nested bi/tri fold, and has a top exit sub tray of a couple hundred sheets. It also has an integrated face trim. This saddle stitch unit folds text weight sheets in 3 signature set quantities and cover weight sheets as a single signature. It builds the book backwards with the folded sheets on a saddle with the stitch heads adjacent to the spine, stitches when the book is complete, trims, and outputs. This was called the SD-501 for the C6500/1050 and is now the SD-506 on the C6000/C7000/C8000/1051/1200.