Finishing - Digital

At the BindRite 2014 annual meeting, National Print Owners Association (NPOA) president John Stewart concluded that labor costs are rising significantly faster than other shop expenditures.

According to MBO America's Director of Sales Lance Martin, the Inkjet Summit offered the perfect venue for the company to show off its latest successes and new equipment for digital and hybrid shops. Martin noted the well-targeted event allowed him to "reintroduce MBO to the digital inkjet crowd."

Komfi, a manufacturer of one-sided laminating equipment, has chosen AmeriLam and other members of the Innove Global Group to represent the company in North America.

As the industry evolves, it is fitting that digital finishing receives more attention today as the North American market moves further towards industrial inkjet production. Now more than ever before, there is a need for highly efficient finishing systems that can keep pace with the increasing speed of inkjet printing systems, and which in turn cater to rising print production demands.

Your company has just ordered a brand new finishing system, and you're excited as all get-out about getting this baby on the floor and operating. Your operators and maintenance people are pumped and ready-to-go. What could go wrong? Plenty.

In an effort to better serve the growing digital market, Muller Martini is relocating the manufacturing of Scalable SigmaLine from the Swiss factory to its Allentown, PA, production facility, and will begin producing the digital book manufacturing systems in May. The new facility will also feature a Demonstration Center where customers and industry professionals can experience live demonstrations of the technology.

When planning an in-line system, make sure you consult with someone who has the experience and knowledge to gauge the "fit" of the various components that will be needed. Questions of speed, paper hand-off between systems, and the operating interface between the modules must all be calculated.

MBO America is sponsoring two upcoming industry events: the Binding Industries Association (BIA) Annual Conference, being held in Dallas on March 31-April 2, 2014; and the Inkjet Summit, held in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, on April 7-9, 2014. Participation in, and sponsorship of, these events—with more on the horizon—further confirms the company's commitment to its customer-empowering marketing and education initiative, announced earlier this year.

Last week, I had the pleasure of spending some time at Strategic Content Imaging in Secaucus, NJ. I was there for other business, but I had a chance to see one of their 30"-wide continuous inkjet presses running along at about 800-feet-per-minute. This got me thinking.

Following the launch of the Sprint line of digital finishing equipment, Vits International has been accepted into the HP SmartStream Solution Partner Program for the high-speed digital web market.