Have you ever spent all night or all weekend working on a job because of a bindery equipment breakdown? If you’re like me, that’s probably the moment you took a keener interest in maintaining your equipment. It’s been my experience that a large number of printing companies have this type of ‘reactive maintenance’ program. When something breaks you fix it.
Have you ever said “yes” to a folding job only to find out the piece was a miniature fold which was too small for your equipment? I have, even though I had been specifically asked if any of our folding machines could do a job that small. After it arrived in the bindery and once I got over the initial panic, I remembered there was a simple technique for folding below the minimum published size.
Aside from the usual variety of scoring, perforating and cutting tools that you can add to your folding machine, there are other productivity add-ons you might not have heard about. Or maybe your post-press operation has grown, and that long-forgotten accessory you didn’t need five years ago is exactly what you need today.
Imagine this: your customer comes to you with a special bookbinding project. There is only one copy, it’s 800 pages long, it’s entirely hand illustrated and hand written on hand-made paper. Your binding method must be very sturdy in order to withstand repeated heavy handling. It must be artistically pleasing to some of the most famous and demanding artists in the world. And oh yes, it took the author untold years to complete to his perfectionist satisfaction.
Soon after we started the Bindery Success Blog, I was discussing this new ‘blog’ stuff with a colleague of ours who owns a sizable trade bindery operation. He asked, “So, what are you going to do when you run out of stuff to talk about?” Well, nearly 200 Bindery Success Blog articles later there are still plenty of ideas in the pipeline.
As a kid I loved escaping into science fiction books and magazines, blissfully wandering off to a future filled with incredible technologies. The stories made it easy to imagine myself in the cockpit of a 21st century spacecraft or a scientist in a cutting-edge lab. Whatever the story line happened to be I would get lost in the future fantasy.
There is a funny tendency in human beings to undermine their very own efforts at succeeding. Maybe it’s nature or nurture or a combination of both. Most of us at one time or another (me included) are guilty of occasional ‘self-sabotage.’ Here are five signs that you might be dooming yourself to falling short of your potential and harming your career.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Rodrigo Castellanos of Offset Universal, a printing company with an extensive perfect binding and saddle stitching operation. Although his company focuses on publishing and printing books for direct clients, their bindery equipment capabilities led them to do trade bindery work for numerous printing companies throughout Mexico. He offers insight on ways to stay productive and competitive in our ever-changing industry especially with regard to the perfect binding aspect of the business.
Most folding machine operators are familiar with the use of marks to aid in setting up any given folding job. Depending on your model of folding machine, it’s likely loaded with marks, indicators, dials and rulers to make it easier to set up. You probably have a lot of home-made marks of your own. Those of you with newer computer controlled automatic folders have it even better. You can dial up the exact same settings again and again with the push of a button.
Want to find out if your next interviewee for a bindery department opening is a good candidate? Try this experiment. Show them a piece of bindery equipment and briefly explain what it does. Then pause for a few moments and ask them, “What’s on your mind?” If they answer, “I was wondering what else I could do with it,” then you have a lifer who is perfect for bindery work.