Finishing - Digital

BY CHERYL A. ADAMS Printer, printer . . . How does your bindery grow? Certainly not with cockleshells all in a row—but with the same careful cultivation, operational dedication and savvy business sense that commercial printers are using to grow their prepress and pressroom areas. But forget all the bells and whistles of prepress and press for a moment. Instead, take a behind-the-scenes look at how three very different commercial printers—two with extensive bindery operations and one with limited finishing services—are growing their overall businesses by investing in their back ends. Blue Ocean PressAbsolute AutomationYou never want to have to print a job over

With good help hard to find, the right tool for the job is the key to value-added finishing techniques. BY ERIK CAGLE There's no need to tell Joe Rigby that market demand for plastic coil binding jobs can be a finicky one. The owner of Delaware Valley Bindery in Trenton, NJ, may field four or five plastic coil jobs in one month, then nary a quote for three or four months. As job traffic goes, so does the number of added workers at Delaware Valley Bindery, who are temporary employees. "This kind of work goes hot and cold. We'll have a lot of jobs in a short

To provide customers with one-stop shopping, the decision was made to expand Intelligencer Printing's ink-jet imaging capabilities—a marketing concept whose time had come. Intelligencer Printing is proud to be known for its "exceptional character and capability." As a major printing business and employer in the mid-Atlantic market, Intell impresses clientele with its circumspect corporate culture, entrepreneurial spirit and team-building philosophy of involving employees at every level. Chartered in 1794 by a family of Morovian missionaries who emigrated to the Lancaster, PA, area, Intelligencer has been owned by the same family since 1866 and still follows its founders' commitment to continuously expand its technical and physical capabilities

BY ERIK CAGLE Once upon a time, a print buyer ran into a commercial printer's plant and screamed, "I want this job done, and I want it done yesterday." Aside from rattling off an unrealistic mantra, what the customer really wanted has become the genesis of the one-stop shop. The needs of the customer became immediate, and printers wishing to maintain a healthy clientele roster looked beyond their pressrooms and soon learned the necessity of incorporating extensive electronic prepress and postpress capabilites to meet these ever-shrinking deadlines. "In today's business, quick turnaround at a reasonable price is everything," says Haig Atamain, president and CEO

BY JACK RICKARD Until the 1990s, sheetfed printers had little opportunity to sell products with remoist glue. Today, short run remoist glue jobs are practical because the current crop of machines yield high quality jobs at good production rates. Both sheetfed and non-heatset web printers now can produce products with direct response reply devices and participate in profitable direct mail campaigns. There are primarily two ways of applying remoist glue. The older technology—cold application of water-soluble remoist glue—works by transferring glue to paper by either a wheel or a blanket. This process has two main advantages. First, heat by itself doesn't activate it, which means it's

BY ERIK CAGLE If you think it's not easy making a living in the postpress environment, consider the state of the equipment manufacturers. Finishing trends are causing manufacturers to respond almost as quickly as current turnaround demands. Issues abound: A lack of trained workers beget the call for increased automation. Value-added product enhancements are desired to help break away from a sea of finishing conformity. Commercial printers are being called upon to handle customers' projects in-house—from start to finish. When printers and trade finishers feel the pinch, they pass it on to the manufacturer, whose job it is to make life easier for them.

How profitable are digital press investments? Not very—if on-demand postpress support is lacking. Finish-on-demand is just as important as its glamorous partner, as any on-demand printer can well attest. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The finishing component of on-demand digital printing is every bit as important as is the high-tech print engine that drives the most elite of digital presses. If the finishing finesse is missing, despite the best performance power of the finest digital color press, a digital print job is not only at risk of not being on-demand, but not being on time. As more traditional offset commercial printers and short-run shops go

BOSTON—A city renowned for its historical tea parties, its commons, the Charles, the Pops, the Celtics...and variable image binding. Well, maybe you won't find quite that description in a Frommer's Guide to New England just yet, but that may change if Edinboro Offset has anything to do with it. In the past two years, this commercial printer has doubled in growth, due in part to a determined attitude—and a process it terms "variable image binding." Founded in 1947, Edinboro Offset—whose original owner was one of the first people to own an offset press—maintained its small-to-midsize status printing jobs for a targeted market of