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.
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.
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.
Small tabletop folding machines are simple, reliable pieces of bindery equipment. With their utility at doing short runs quickly and their prevalence in the used equipment market, they’re a popular option for digital print finishing departments.
If you manage a post-press operation, you know how easy it is to be pulled every which way by the daily details of running, maintaining and scheduling a mix of bindery equipment. Throw in an equipment breakdown, a personnel issue, or a snow storm and your headaches multiply.
As you increase the speed on a saddle stitcher (or any piece of bindery equipment,) you're likely to see more and more defects as the speed increases. I often quote Kevin Carey from his ABC’s of Diecutting, “Increasing speed exposes weaknesses in methods, in practices, in tools, in technology, in organization, and in knowledge, skill and experience.”
This is one of those bindery tricks that folding machine operators might not need often, but when needed can save a lot of setup time. If you’re folding a sheet in thirds and you don’t have a calculator or ruler handy, this technique will mark the sheet precisely in thirds, and you don’t have to convert from decimal to fractions of an inch.