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.
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.
Printers have had to contend with an entire universe of substrates since Gutenberg. One of the major challenges has been the very lightweight papers used for financial, pharmaceutical, and legal printed pieces. Printing on these is no joy, as they don't have the tensile strength or body of heavier grades.
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.
Static has been a perennial villain (and sometime friend) in both the print and finishing process. Controlling static is vital in the digital finishing process, but fortunately, the tools are there.
I had the pleasure of attending a rather festive "open house" event last week at a major offset printer. This firm had implemented a digital print and finishing platform in a big way. Re-fitting a space within their plant, they outfitted the new digital "module" with an HP continuous inkjet press, HP Indigo presses, and several high-speed cut-sheet toner printers.
Most of us in the finishing world are familiar with machine-level automation, which has made enormous progress since the early 1990's. Craftsman-level machine adjustments and makereadies have been largely automated and can now take only a few minutes. But finishing material workflow has been a more difficult challenge.
Are we finished with offset finishing? What remains to be done with the future of the offset bindery? I am of the opinion that (mostly) most of the major breakthroughs have been accomplished, Been there, done that.
Trim extraction systems solve many problems at once. These typically consist of a series of ducts that use fans and blowers to create a strong vacuum. Connections are made to the waste pickup point of each machine. Paper trim and paper dust are "vacuumed" up into overhead ducts.
When it comes to the finishing end of digital print, there is still a lack of "connectivity." The offset world saw the introduction of JDF (Job Definition Format) more than 15 years ago. Enter digital print. Each vendors' print engine ran on a different software workflow. There was no JDF equivalent of a universal digital print-to-finish "language."
