FINISHING FLEXIBILITY — SETTING THE STANDARD
February 2006
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Webb, president and owner of Mobile, AL-based Superior Printing, had envisioned the ideal saddlestitching system. It would be a flat-sheet collator/bookletmaker that could fold, stitch and cap off with a three-knife trim.
“I knew what I wanted; I just had to wait for somebody to build it,” Webb says. “I run mostlyquarter-size presses, with one half-size. I looked at signature collators, but my production was not really set up for running a lot of signatures. A flat-sheet collator was really what I needed.”
Webb had been using a handfed machine and a seven-station unit that was performing stitching and folding. Thus, gaining speed and efficiencies was vital for Superior Printing.
Webb found what he was looking for while attending the 2004 Sunbelt Graphics show in Atlanta—the Horizon StitchLiner 5500 from Standard Finishing. Just to be sure he wasn’t dreaming, Webb spent two days putting the system through the ringer. When Webb exhausted the various test runs, the decision was pretty easy.
“It pretty much did all I asked it to do,” Webb notes. “That’s what made my decision. . .I bought it right off the floor.”
While mostly producing standard 8.5x11˝ saddlestitched books, Superior Printing might fashion a 36-page booklet that is completely cover weight, or small jobs such as 3.5x5˝ booklets. Webb was somewhat surprised that the system could consistently trim up to 1⁄32˝ accuracy.
The StitchLiner also came in handy with a particular job—bank books, that called for the cover receiving an extra panel folded over the back cover.
“With the bank book, I would trim it right up to the edge of the fold and not cut the fold off, but still make a nice book,” Webb explains. “I’ve also done jobs where some of the inside pages were folded, and we just fold that about 1⁄16˝ short of the trim size. It’s very accurate on the trimming part.”
Besides stitching, Superior Printing offers most other binding solutions, including plastic coil, twin-loop wire and perfect binding. A local printer, Webb says his shop does trade printing and binding for other local printers, mostly short-run jobs and catalogs. His immediate plans include the addition of a five- or six-color half-size press.
When it comes to books, booklets and directories, there’s really no such thing as a typical job at Graphics Factory in Waukesha, WI. Whether it’s 2,400 copies of a 550-page book, 50,000 copies of a 24-page cable guide or 500 28-page newsletters, accommodation is the name of the game.
Companies Mentioned:
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A Field Guide to Folding
Introduction to Graphic Communication
