It's not unusual for a print shop or bindery to encounter jobs that are outside the scope of the finishing equipment on their floor. Maybe the job is a favor for a good customer, or perhaps it's part of a package of jobs. Whatever the reason, once the decision is made to handle the job through outsourcing, there are a few things you can do to make sure it's a trouble-free event.
Micro Perforating on Folding Machines, Scoring Machines and Perforating machines can be troublesome if your operators don't include this little-known technique as part of their setup procedure. Discover how to get flatter, more consistent micro perforations on all types of bindery and finishing equipment.
Saddle-stitched books often need to be folded in half (after stitching and trimming) for mailing purposes. Such soft folding or re-folding is a tricky process when the fold is perpendicular to the spine, especially if you don’t have a knife folder to do the job and you’re trying to get by with your buckle folder. Shops that specialize in this type of bindery work either have equipment set up to work in-line with their saddle stitcher or have off-line bindery equipment modified for the task.
Folding machine operators have been benefiting from vacuum belt registration ever since it’s introduction, with better sheet control and higher speeds than conventional belt + marble configurations.
The blessing and the curse for folding machine and bindery equipment operators is that there is always something new to learn. It’s great when you learn something new and you can do a job faster or better. But you can’t rest on your laurels because on this new plateau of performance there are even more things to learn, more questions and more is expected of you. There is a Chinese proverb that sums it up: “Learning is like rowing upstream. Not to advance is to drop back.”
Of the 847 things that can go wrong when operating your folding machine, here’s another one you might not have thought about. It may never come to your attention until you run into mysterious problems with sheets misbehaving in the right angle folding sections.
A Bindery Success™ subscriber recently emailed to talk about an issue he was having with perforating on their folding machine. As with most post-press problems, the more we dug into it, the more we had to peel back layers. In this case the problem which generated the inquiry is that perforator blades are wearing out too fast for the boss’ liking.
There is no doubt that our Technifold anvil-style perforating systems deliver a cleaner, flatter product than conventional folding machine rotary perforating systems (illustrations, right.) There is less distortion of the sheet and it’s possible to safely get more teeth per inch (tpi) with the stronger double-bevel perf blade typically used in the anvil method.
For something with just two sides to it, it’s amazing the hundreds of questions that can arise. We are of course, referring to paper. There’s a good chance that some of what you’ve found to be true about printing and finishing paper is counter-intuitive. For instance, the simple question, ‘Which side of the paper should I score on my folding machine?’ falls into that camp.
If you work in a trade bindery or print shop handling a lot of book work, by now you probably have your own bag of tricks for folding 32 page signatures. If however you’re not accustomed to running them on a regular basis, you might encounter a bit of a learning curve.