I can hear the muttering…what can possibly be creative about working in the bindery? “After all, I run the same folding machine and same jobs over and over again, every day.” Or, “I manage 2 shifts with 50 people, a dozen machines, demanding customers and it’s the same stressful stuff every day.”
“Everything customers tell me over the phone is a lie,” said my friend in regard to troubleshooting calls. He’s an electronics technician for a major print finishing equipment manufacturer and in the course of his job he fields help-desk calls.
In my bindery supervisor days I recall a few PIA salespeople (and I don’t mean Printing Industries of America) following client’s jobs through the print shop, snooping around in what seemed to be a random fashion. They might pick up a press sheet, glance at how a skid was wrapped, or pull a few folded brochures from a box. If they glared at me and walked back to the office with brochures in hand I knew something was wrong.
Trimming a folded piece two or more up is a great way to increase folding machine productivity. Yet the very act of trimming the pieces to their final size is a process that sometimes presents challenges.
If you've ever had to fold reply envelopes for inserting in a saddle stitched book, then you understand suffering. You’ve got it all working against you:
Troubleshooting bindery problems can be frustrating, with dozens of variables often leading us in the wrong direction. As we gain experience the process is simplified because we learn to quickly narrow down the field of possible causes to a handful of critical items.
The ‘fully automated print shop’, where there are minimal human touches in a job workflow, is a worthy ideal. The grim reality is, I suspect, a little messier. No matter how much modern automated pre-press, printing and bindery equipment you have in your shop, I’ll wager there are days when your staff has to actually pick up sheets of paper and collate, fold, glue, insert or assemble by hand.
Perhaps you wince at the thought of replacing fold rollers. “What...spend thousands of dollars on recovering rollers?? Naw, just stick some tape on them and we'll be fine.”
Bindery work can be a joy on those days when you figure out how to do something a little better, faster and easier. If cheaper is included, and you don’t have to buy anything to do it, then everybody’s happy! Fewer touches in the printing and bindery production process means higher productivity and more profitability and this concept is the driving force behind much of today’s new bindery equipment and software.
Starting today Technifold customers now have a new resource page to visit for instructions and operating info on our line of bindery products. It’s not all there yet, but we expect to have a comprehensive listing within two weeks or so—we’re working on it daily! As of today we have FAQ’s for the EZ-Fit Tri-Creaser, Fast Fit Tri-Creaser and the Micro Perforator.