Attending Graph Expo was great, although not seeing Heidelberg there in their traditional spot made for a different show. It seems that digital printing has moved to the front of the bus, and the booths at the back of the hall will end up being the traditional press manufacturers. Quite a change from years past!
There were some real gems that we would like to get our hands on in the future. Already, we are making plans for Social Print Experiment 2.0 (2011) and I am hopeful that some of these things will end up on our floor as part of it.
The first piece of equipment was from New Bind America. Called the Adventure, this machine binds books up to 2″ thick with PUR or EVA glue; spines up to 17″ long; and handles approximately 200 books an hour. It’s priced at around $50,000 and is purchased direct from New Bind America. It would be the perfect fit for our shop for short-run digital publishing or photo book production.
On a higher end, Unibind had an automated book production machine that could handle up to 400 books an hour. It was slick, highly automated, and could almost run in a lights-out manufacturing facility. List price is around $325,000. There are none installed in the US yet, but I bet that will change this year.
Speaking of books, I came across a book printing company this evening with a unique website. The company is called Corley Printing Company in St. Louis, MO. Their website reads like a book (literally) and even has some company videos worth taking a look at. I like it!
The French company MGI was showing their JetVarnish again this year, with a new larger format size of 20″ by 40″ for finishing. When you look at the way spot UV coating is done today – highly inefficient and costly to produce just one piece – it’s a wonder there aren’t more coating companies jumping into the technology. Flood UV coating equipment has become the norm for digital printers to purchase, and with the prices dropping considerably (TEC Lighting showed a new model for around $10,000) you would think coating companies would be looking for something to make them more competitive or sustainable in their vertical market.
In a seminar I attended the tail end of, Frank Romano spoke about digital UV coating being one of the things printers should look at, and I understand why. With profit margins being where printing was 10 years ago, it doesn’t take many months to pay off your spot UV coater investment. The MGI JetVarnish is currently the only digital spot UV coater on the market, with a minimum sheet run of just one. It also coats both digital and commercial offset printing, so it’s not limited to a particular format. We’ll be able to offer a more in-depth review of the MGI JetVarnish in the near future, as the one at the show was sold to a new startup digital printing company in San Diego.
I also saw the new Kodak Nexpress with it’s longer sheet size for book publishers. The sheet length can be run up to 26″ long using a roll-fed feeder or with a new feeder table being released in a few months. Pricewise, it’s still a considerable investment at around $700K, but it does show that digital print manufacturers are considering the longer sheet size as being important. The only press able to print longer than the 26″ sheet size (flat sheets) is the MGI DP60 Meteor – they run up to 47″ long.
With just a few additions we could add on-demand book publishing to the things we do with the Social Print Experiment, and for not a lot of money out of pocket. We’ll be meeting in the next few weeks to determine if we can go that route, and to further refine our plans for SPE 2.0.
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There is another digital machine able to print up to 13″ by 46″ and this is the Konica Minolta production. C5501, C6501, C6000 and C7000 do the job and I think you should consider for book covers and multi-page flyers.
It was interesting reading updates about financial data, sells, and # jobs printed.
Take care
You’re correct, the 6501 can print in banner mode, however, it is through the bypass which means that production runs of say 500 pieces would have the tray move up and down 500 times because you cannot stack sheets of stock into the bypass tray; each sheet is done individually. Banner mode for the 6501 is really for one-offs, and also assumes you don’t have any hardware (additional drawer units) that cover the bypass tray opening. If it’s a production machine, you likely have the drawer units.
The DP60, on the other hand, has a stack feeder which can hold up to 12″ of stock (number of sheets has a variable depth depending on the thickness of the stock) and feed it sheet after sheet without having to be fed manually.
Regarding the use of the Oki for banner length, same thing, and the cost would be so prohibitive that you might as well put it on a traditional press if it is not variable. The envelope presses like the Xante, which use the Oki as the engine, tend to have a very high cost to print on to an envelope, unless the image is the size of a postage stamp.
Regarding banner printing, the 6501 can not produce up to 46″ in length. This is true for the 5501, 6501, 6000, 7000 and 8000. It is because of the software and while plans are being made to offer a banner option on the production units, only the convenience (light duty) 452/552/652 machines can do that now. I should know since I work for Konica Minolta.
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