How do you catch booklets as they exit your digital printer's finisher?

[jpfulton248]

I get the impression that most shops have a makeshift way of catching booklets as they come out of their digital printer's finisher. We've always just used a box which is probably the most common answer but it's certainly not ideal because of they way they pile on especially when we are just running a booklet with no cover (all lighter weight stock) as they can get folded and slightly damaged from the way they haphazardly pile up. Anybody have a better creative solution?

 

[kslight]

I've always used a paper box at the end of the conveyor. I've been doing this with ancient booklet-makers like those attached to the original Docutech, to 4110, 250, J75, others, variety of media? It only falls a short distance from the end of the conveyor into the box, and isn't all that fast, never had an issue with damaging the books. Obviously if you let hundreds pile in there at a time it could eventually lightly wrinkle some books but I believe the intent would be for the operator to intervene and offload the books every once in awhile. But I suppose if you really wanted something different, you could probably take something like a furniture dolly or two and build a little ramp out of wood or cardboard so the books stack better.

 

[Schnicklefritz]

The KM110 prints booklets slow enough that we can hand offload from the conveyor into a box or PO tub. We like to stack them by 10s and then reverse direction to keep the stacks from getting unwieldy. Of course, whoever is doing this can multi-task during the process as long as there's no backup on the saddle-stitch conveyor allowing nesting to occur.

 

[jpfulton248]

Our issue is that (like today) we sometimes do not have a human in the press room to monitor/unload. The same guy that works on the files is the guy that hits print and the guy that organizes the disaster of a pile after. I've actually found that a box top with the sides cut and folded down with something propping it up a few inches to make a little ramp and then a sheet of paper on the ground works decently enough but certainly not ideal.

 

[OffsetStorefront]

This is really funny to me (we use boxes too). We have all this incredible technology and machines that contain the end result of brilliant engineering over decades...that everyone still uses a cardboard box to collect the output with.

 

[kslight]

My experience is that most of these inline finishers aren't smart enough to stop when a staple runs out/jams, when it doesn't trim right, when it pulls a double, when the print goes to hell, etc...so I am reluctant to leave one of these devices unattended for too long. For the same reason I wouldn't normally just completely load up a color printer and let it run unattended for several hours on end.

So the open box works fine, I would usually pull them out every 2-3 dozen booklets (that's every 10-15 minutes depending on the job?), check for problems, and as the above poster suggested...stack in tens back and forth in a box (unless they require further finishing).

 

[Tim80]

Not creative but technical solution: You can easily improve this process by using a palamides automatic delivery. Have a look at the new gamma with the optional banding.