Stitched ripping booklet

[PrintitinColor]

I am running a newsletter on our Horizon VAc 100 collate and spf-20 booklet maker. It's 10 sheets 11x18 finishing to 8.5x11 and digitally printed on 80# matte text self cover. When I set the stitch up to hit the center of the fold where it should be - the staple rips through the top 2 or three sheets of the booklet. I've included a couple of pictures to help illustrate. I've tried adjusting the nip of the fold rollers and adjusting the height of the fold knife and neither adjustment makes a difference. In my other shop location I have a similiar equipment setup and it does the same thing. The only way I can get it to run without ripping anything is to center the fold on the spine and run the staples a little to the left of the spine. It works but is obviously not ideal. Any suggestions on how to get it to run?

Thanks,
MIKE

 

[Pennypicher]

Your fold rollers are ripping the cover from the booklet. If the rollers are steel get a scrubby pad and scrub the rollers. probably the first set will do. If rubber scrub with a cloth. Built up fuser oils etc from digital causing slippage. Bet if you use a blank sheet of plain offset paper as the cover it works ok.

 

[tngcas]

Let me know if you come up with a fix for this because both of our Morgana's do this. Plockmatic charged us $1000 to come out and look at the machines and didn't fix it. They just looked at it and said Oh, there's a software update for this. Ran the software update and then never actually fixed it. Then got mad at us when we complained about it not being fixed. (Yes, I'm a bit bitter about Plockmatic/Morgana).

Moving the staples to the "back edge" of the square spine only sometimes works for us.

Your fold rollers are ripping the cover from the booklet. If the rollers are steel get a scrubby pad and scrub the rollers. probably the first set will do. If rubber scrub with a cloth. Built up fuser oils etc from digital causing slippage. Bet if you use a blank sheet of plain offset paper as the cover it works ok.

I'd love to try this but the Plockmatic rollers do not appear to be accessible without a significant amount of disassembly (far beyond what I would be comfortable attempting).

 

[PrintitinColor]

Thanks for the suggestion. I cleaned the chrome rollers and the rubber rollers and ran two test books and they worked fine. One of the chrome rollers was not very accessible and had to clean about a half inch at a time and jog the machine to advance the roller - but it seems to have worked. The real test will be later in the week when another job comes through. I appreciate the help!

 

[narseman]

I'd love to try this but the Plockmatic rollers do not appear to be accessible without a significant amount of disassembly (far beyond what I would be comfortable attempting).

I know that feeling. However.. I had a thought.. Run some covers with cleaner on them. EG, A soft uncoated cover sheet with a cleaner of some kind.. I don't know the odds of igniting a solvent by doing that.. But there are machines that use this method to clean up rollers etc. Perhaps a non flammable solvent. Just a thought. I take NO responsibility for anything you might try.. I do NOT recommend this course of action. (← Legal disclaimer )

 

[PrintitinColor]

So we ran the another job after cleaning the rollers and it didn't help. We still had to run the staples behind the fold. Could this be a setup issue? Does anyone have guidelines for how to set the fold roller gap, fold knife and chrome fold rollers? Possible other issues?

 

[narseman]

So this Matte text you're using.. I assume it's coated stock(?) Quite heavy? I have had this problem with heavy coated stocks and the covers ripping off in the booklet maker. It's simply the weight of the stock that when the rollers are pulling it (down?) inertia is holding the book back, while rollers are pulling at the contact area, the cover... With me it was cover stock ripping off. Your situation is worse 'cos self cover.. Just text weight for a cover. Solved by using un-coated text. Considerably lighter in weight. Less inertial resistance.

 

[TJPrinter]

This isn’t specific to the spf-20 booklet maker, but maybe try to lengthen the stitch length so it doesn’t need to clinch the booklet as tight.

If it's the inertia like narseman said, then I doubt this will help. Blank uncoated cover that gets pulled off, what a pain that would be though.

 

[PrintitinColor]

Narseman - yes, it's 80# text coated silk. 11 sheets 11x18 stitching and trimming to 8.5x11 (44 pages). I would imagine that the uncoated text would fix it but not too excited about having to pull off 1250 of them. Not a huge quantity, but ....

Thanks for the suggestion TJ Printer - I'll take a look at that.

Does anyone have suggestions for setting the black folder rollers and the chrome roller?

 

[Pennypicher]

When you ask about setting the rollers when running the duplo it automatically adjust the roller gap to the # of sheets and you can tweak it tighter or less. Im guessing your machine must have a gap setting. Too tight they wont come thru and too wide it wont grip and pull thru the rollers.

 

[PrintitinColor]

When you ask about setting the rollers when running the duplo it automatically adjust the roller gap to the # of sheets and you can tweak it tighter or less. Im guessing your machine must have a gap setting. Too tight they wont come thru and too wide it wont grip and pull thru the rollers.

The adjustment is all manual on this unit (with levers to adjust to 5 different presets) and there are further adjustments if you loosen a jam nut and adjust a screw.