Binding - Perfect

This is a story that's no doubt been repeated more than once. You're a company with a long and glorious tradition of manufacturing first-class finishing equipment. You've had a terrific run through the 70's, 80's, 90's and into the 21st century. But in the last four years, things have shifted.

The cost for producing a sewn book that's digitally printed, adds a considerable lift to the overall production price. Now there are certain markets, school yearbooks, some wedding albums, and higher-quality hardcovers which demand sewing. And in those one-off segments, price is not such an issue. But for other segments, it's a harder sell.

Many of us over 40 years of age marvel at the digital proficiency of the 20-somethings. We look at the millennials (and those younger) and their desire to be software engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs, video game developers. But, we wonder, who's going to run the saddle stitcher?

In a bid to keep cash flow robust, bindery systems vendors embarked on a campaign to offer extensive maintenance and upgrade services.

We haven't seen the introduction of new perfect binders from major finishing vendors in some time. But the recent Hunkeler Innovationdays event proved to be the perfect venue to introduce some new technology. Both Muller Martini and Meccanotecnica showcased new perfect binders with new technology in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The digital production environment places special needs on manufacturers of traditional offset finishing systems.

It wasn’t very long ago that pundits were declaiming the death of printed books, to be replaced by the glow of millions of e-readers.

Muller Martini's Alegro has enjoyed the most successful launch of any new perfect binder in Muller Martini’s history. It was first introduced at drupa 2012 and has over 45 installations worldwide. Most recently, a significant number of North American print manufacturers have selected the Alegro as their perfect binder of choice, with eight new installations happening within the past 18 months.

The RISO Perfect Binder not only incorporates the benefits of inkjet technology and the production speed of the ComColor X1 series printers, but converts the system into a self-contained book manufacturing solution for both short-runs and high-volume production. RISO’s inkjet Perfect Binder solution prints books as thick as 300 sheets of 20-lb. bond—which meets or exceeds the production needs of most digital book printers.

A new multiweb offline finishing solution has been added to VITS International's Sprint line of finishing equipment that is ideal for the perfect-bound and saddle-stitch book markets.