Digital Sheet Feeder vs collating towers

[AP90]

hey guys, I'm wanting to add an offline booklet maker for added flexibility and speed. I really like the sheet feeeders that feed precollated sets. We are a digital only shop, and I don't see us adding offset. The sales guy keeps leaning towards saying we need the towers. I realize they're faster but we can only run so fast with our press. What would you guys suggest?

 

[arossetti]

Is this for a Morgana?

 

[AP90]

We've looked at the Morgana. Leaning more towards the duplo systems. We'll be purchasing a booklet maker along with the feeding system too

 

[PrintIT]

We're digital only - We have a CP Bourg stitcher with the collated sheet feeder. Great machine. It also has a scoring unit, and trims 3 sides.
We've had it for about 4 years now & the feeder has been great. Very little makeready or waste.

 

[arossetti]

In my last digital shop we went with a tower. It was more annoying to transport individual spreads instead of just a printed stack of collated material however it was much slower to feed with a feeder meant for collated material. Also we didn't have a collator so it gave us an additional tool, and it was cheaper.

 

[Inkscape Print]

We have a Duplo sheet feeder. I had a tower before and would not go back. The feeder is much easier to set up and runs plenty fast for the 3 digital presses that we run. We have some issues with static in the printed sheets but am sure the tower would have the same issues.

 

[jrsc]

We have a duplo with a 2200 sheet feeder. It works well. We are also all digital. If I had to do it again I might get a tower instead. I think if you get a tower and the computer software you can use it like a sheet feeder. Just tell it how many sheets to pull out of each tray and you can do any combination or have it just pull out of one and roll over to the next one when it's empty. On their bigger machines you can put a sheet feeder and tower in line with each other and use both.

 

[Craig]

We have the Morgana BM 500. We upgraded to the vacuum feeder. It has some drawbacks, but has been a workhorse. Get the squarefold option whatever you do!

 

[AP90]

Thanks for the input guys. Im really leaning towards a sheet feeder vs the tower simply because we only have 1 press, so printed material is only going to come out of it so fast. While the sheet feeders are much slower, I feel like it wouldn't have any problem keeping up with our press. I think the brochures say it can feel something like 200 sheets/minute, and since our printer doesn't handle that much a minute, I feel like we could always stay caught up.

 

[Stickman42]

I echo what jrsc and Inkscape say above.

We just had a Duplo 350 with 2200 feeder installed last week. We upgraded from a DBM 120 + 120T, and had used collating towers before that.

We, like you, are all digital. I couldn't justify the added expense of collating tower(s). Our runs are not huge and not continuous, so we've got time to wait for the machine to do it's thing. So far, the bookletmaker has performed extremely well. As a barometer on speed, we just bound and trimmed 1M 5" x 8" 32 pp + cover (9 leaves total) booklets in a little over an hour.

 

[auchprinting]

Don't use collating towers. When you consider the time involved for set-up, it is easier just to Shift 9.
Duplo Bookletmaker DBM 250 T anyone know how to replace tapes at the entry? 1 broke.