Collating Equipment — Collating Cravings
Although digital printing has caused "minimal" problems for this market to date, Bowman warns that the potential is real. "It will start to affect demand for standard collators as more pre-collated material is digitally produced," he predicts.
System for Various Jobs
Rosback offers Setmaster vacuum-feed horizontal units for collating a variety of applications, from one-time carbon; newsprint; fabrics and vinyls; laminates; folded sections; business forms; tabbed index cards; and, of course, paper. Features include no-tool setup, continuous loading, missing- and double-sheet detection system, and variable speed to 3,300 cph. Also offered are stitch/fold, trim, gluing, deep-pile feeding, duplexing and crash numbering options.
Finding experienced bindery workers is becoming an increasing problem for printers and trade finishers, admits Hans Max, president and CEO of MBO America. As a result, he says collator manufacturers are providing more automated features and digital options on their new machines. This could help draw new blood into the industry and should make it easier to train less experienced workers.
"The younger generation seems to adapt easily to digital equipment," Max observes. To meet the graphic arts industry's collating needs, MBO is the exclusive sales and service provider of Theisen & Bonitz collating machines.
Theisen & Bonitz offers three versions of collators—the tb sprint, tb flex and tb eco. These collators can accommodate a wide variety of material, from lightweight paper to heavy chipboard. All T&B collators offer such standard equipment as a missed sheet detector at each station, and double sheet detector on the delivery. T&B collators come in various sizes from 9.875x13.75˝ to 28.2x40.125˝.
The tb flex model with a belt transport system offers high flexibility due to special synchronization features and reaches highest speeds in all sizes. The tb flex can be utilized to run stitch, fold and trim jobs into one direction and collating-only jobs into the other direction. This feature allows a faster job change.
