Double fold on a booklet

[KeepSwimming]

Hope you folks can tell us where we've gone wrong. We printed and finished 1,000 - 12 page booklets, 8.5" x 11" with 2 staples on our digital press. The client wants them folded down to 5.5" x 8.5". We've done this before but now we can't get them to fold without a bunch of wrinkles in the original fold. I really don't want to do these by hand, any suggestions ?

 

[pippip]

What stock did you use?

Is grain direction same as last time?

 

[keith1]

Assuming you printed 11 x 17 long grain the grain direction for the final fold to 5.5 x 8.5 would be to your favour.
Had you been aware before hand you could have scored each sheet prior to booklet making - down the length of 17". Same idea as you would when cross folding 11 x 17 to fit an envelope. It might have helped.
Roller pressure on your folder could be an issue worth pursuing. It's likely too tight for the thickness. This would cause creasing.
The easiest way would be to explain to the customer how unfortunate it is that he/she didn't let you know before the job was completed so you could have approached it differently. Now it must be folded by hand and charged accordingly. Once the customer hears of the new, greatly inflated price, your problems should be over.

 

[pdan]

Now it must be folded by hand and charged accordingly. Once the customer hears of the new, greatly inflated price, your problems should be over.

That's never happened.
I've had fair results drop feeding into our Horizon stitcher, trimmer, folder set to half fold.

 

[Bill Ward]

Is it for mailing? After folding and tabbing (assuming you have to do that) would it be more cost effective to mail it flat? (again, assuming it's for mailing)

 

[KeepSwimming]

What stock did you use?

Is grain direction same as last time?

80 lb. gloss text 11x17 Long grain, same as always, but one extra sheet of paper on this one

Assuming you printed 11 x 17 long grain the grain direction for the final fold to 5.5 x 8.5 would be to your favour.
Had you been aware before hand you could have scored each sheet prior to booklet making - down the length of 17". Same idea as you would when cross folding 11 x 17 to fit an envelope. It might have helped.
Roller pressure on your folder could be an issue worth pursuing. It's likely too tight for the thickness. This would cause creasing.
The easiest way would be to explain to the customer how unfortunate it is that he/she didn't let you know before the job was completed so you could have approached it differently. Now it must be folded by hand and charged accordingly. Once the customer hears of the new, greatly inflated price, your problems should be over.

I like that idea, unfortunately it won't be so simple - and they are a good client. However, I will let them know it's probably because of the additional sheet so we can all avoid that next time.

Is it for mailing? After folding and tabbing (assuming you have to do that) would it be more cost effective to mail it flat? (again, assuming it's for mailing)

They are putting it into an envelope with other materials so that's not an option.

 

[KeepSwimming]

Thank you all for your input. We tried adjusting everything on our folder and just couldn't make it work. Does anyone else bring such work home... LOL

 

[rcreveli]

I've never had great success doing this. You have a rigid spine made even more rigid with the addition of stitches.

 

[KeepSwimming]

I've never had great success doing this. You have a rigid spine made even more rigid with the addition of stitches.

True.

 

[kdw75]

We do some 12 page newsletters like this every month and have always hand folded them down to 5.5"x8.5". We use 70# Gloss Text.

 

[tngcas]

We do some 12 page newsletters like this every month and have always hand folded them down to 5.5"x8.5". We use 70# Gloss Text.

Honestly, this makes me feel so much better about some of our processes. We hand fold these as well although I did manage to get a Sprint 5000 Booklet maker to do them and that was great before we sent the machine it back. We'd run them one direction for the stapling and then take the staples out and cross fold them down to 5.5x8.5. This was the only thing it could do successfully and it wasn't worth it for one-use.

 

[realaqu]

Hope you folks can tell us where we've gone wrong. We printed and finished 1,000 - 12 page booklets, 8.5" x 11" with 2 staples on our digital press. The client wants them folded down to 5.5" x 8.5". We've done this before but now we can't get them to fold without a bunch of wrinkles in the original fold. I really don't want to do these by hand, any suggestions ?

a knife folder is the one for this kinda job

 

[Shawnd]

12 page is the highest we go on our Baum folder to fold 8.5x11 down to 5.5x8.5 for mailing, we do quite a bit of this on 70# text. 16 page+ gets mailed as a flat.