In last week’s Bindery Success Blog article we talked about how the hidden complexity of paper affects printing and print finishing operations. Sometimes this mysterious fusion of paper, ink, toner, varnishes, coatings, and environment is enough to agitate the best, most experienced bindery equipment operator. Although there isn’t a magic pill to eliminate all post-press paper problems, here are five simple tips that will make your print finishing life easier.
The speed at which things happen in bindery equipment sometimes makes it difficult to troubleshoot a problem. But with experience, we learn to follow the clues that problems leave behind. The way a wire stitch is misshapen can tell us what piece of the stitcher head is worn or broken. The location and direction of a bent corner in a folded brochure will lead us to where the problem is happening on a folding machine. The sounds of a folder or a saddle stitcher also help us to find and fix problems.
If you work in a print finishing job, your first question might be, “Why would I want to become a print finishing expert?” One reason is that if you’re not perceived as an expert, colleagues and customers simply don’t care what you think. As an expert, people trust you and are eager to believe you. This makes it easier for you to do your job effectively. For instance, it’s more likely that when you suggest a change in the production schedule it will be accepted if you are looked at as knowledgeable.
If you’re new to running 16-page signatures, you might feel a bit overwhelmed with the workload, even with an automatic stacker on a new folding machine. I know I did. Folding 16 page signatures, or any signatures for that matter, requires a lot of effort and attention to detail. There is a lot of stuff going on that you have to keep an eye on. You’ll be doing quality control for multiple folds, loading and unloading, and stacking it all neatly on a skid for the next guy in the production process.
I can already hear the protests: “I’m a creative person, comfortable in my clutter. I can find anything I need in seconds.” Or, “I can’t be something that’s opposite my personality.” The excuses are OK if you work alone and clients will never see your work area. But if you work on bindery equipment or in a print shop environment, all the excuses have to give way to seven reasons why you should be organized.
In a previous Bindery Success Blog article we talked about using jigs with bindery equipment. Today we’re going to show you how easy it is to dramatically reduce setup times on nearly any folding machine by using jigs, or templates. Even if you have a brand new, fully automated folder, stick around. This technique can help you nearly as much as it does those who run older machines.
I hope so! Some things are timeless, especially when we talk about work habits; they don’t really have an expiration date. As long as guillotine cutter technology is around it seems that its venerable work habits should tag along. Even in this era of evolving bindery automation, guillotine cutters are still at the heart of most print finishing and bindery operations.
One baffling problem encountered by many folding machine operators was recently brought to our attention by a Bindery Success™ reader. Here’s the scenario. First, you set the fold rollers pressure (roller gap) for the job you’re running, just as you’ve successfully done a thousand times before. At some point during the run, the fold starts to vary, or perhaps the trim or perforation starts to move around. You double check the fold roller pressures only to find one or more of them too loose, as if the folder were changing fold roller pressure on its own.
There are some advantages to learning to operate folding machines on an obsolete model. Yes, I know youngsters in print finishing would be horrified at the thought of an education on anything less than a fully automated machine. But the experience gave me bindery troubleshooting skills and machine knowledge by forcing me to learn how everything worked.
I’m fortunate to run across bindery equipment problems that occasionally leave me mystified. I say ‘fortunate’ because there is almost always an opportunity to learn something when we encounter a problem, even if it seems unsolvable. The examples here illustrate four things I’ve learned about bindery equipment troubleshooting in particular and perhaps a little about life itself in general!