By Cassandra Balentine
Saddle stitching solutions provide affordability, efficiency, and availability for digital print environments.
In part one of this two-part series, we featured benefits and limitations of saddle stitching equipment for digital print environments. Several manufacturers offer saddle stitching solutions equipped for on demand print. Here we highlight a few.
Duplo
Duplo offers its iSaddle saddle stitch products. The iSaddle System is Duplo’s high-volume saddle stitcher that produces thicker, flatter booklets on demand. Ideal for offset and digitally printed documents, the iSaddle can be configured with a collator, sheet feeder, or both.
Muller Martini
Muller Martini engineers a full range of saddle stitching solutions that process digital, offset, and hybrid products concurrently or separately. The ability for one machine to process any product configuration with ultimate quality and integrity is what the company says sets them apart from the competition.
Muller Martini’s digital saddle stitching portfolio includes the Presto II Digital. The Presto II Digital Thickness Variable saddle stitcher enables the highly efficient processing of dynamic magazines and catalogs, financial statements, healthcare booklets, direct mailers, and other products—no matter varying content, thickness, and run size. The result is a consistent, high-quality end product that is never too loose or too tight, as well as complete validation of the integrity of a run of one or 10,000.
The device handles any thickness from one signature up to ten mm, achieves best quality stitch and trim per the product’s exact thickness, provides validation of variable data publishing content, end-to-end compliance documentation, and book-of-one production performed at full production speed without manual intervention.
Muller Martini’s digital saddle stitching solutions are further enhanced with proprietary Connex Workflow software, which offers seamless job planning and job queuing as well as validation and reporting when integrated with most major digital printing presses.
Spiral Binding
Spiral Binding offers the StitchMaster High Performance. It is a premier, portable high-quality stitcher. It uses the M2000 stitch head and upgraded electronics. It has a convenient one-knob adjustment for work thickness and stitch leg adjustment that sets it apart from the competition. Two StitchMaster HP units can be connected to form an effective two-headed stitching machine with a capacity from two sheets up to 1/4-inch booklets.
At Spiral, the focus is on short-run digital print environments. The company’s StitchMaster HP system is an ideal solution for shops that need high-quality stitching equipment for lower volume applications. It is also great for high-production shops that need a system for occasional short-run products or running press proofs for their clients.
Standard Horizon
The Standard Horizon StitchLiner Mark III is equipped with the latest in automation technology, including true end-to-end support for variable thickness production, a key innovation for personalized and short-run work. The system is designed to meet the evolving requirements of the market and improves on previous technology in virtually every way. The Mark III features increased productivity up to 6,000 booklets per hour, and expanded booklet size, allowing the production of a wider range of applications, including landscape-size booklets, 12×12-inch calendars, and pocket booklets as small as 4.5×3.5 inches.
The StitchLiner Mark III’s automation technology allows for fast and easy setup and changeover as well as the application flexibility to take advantage of it. From flat sheet collating, scoring, folding, and saddle stitching through three-knife trimming, all of the system’s processes are managed through the fully automated setup that includes settings for stitch adjustment so that stitch length and leg balance can be changed job-to-job or on the fly. At the trimmer, no manual adjustments are required for book thickness, and a unique, four-sided jogging design achieves accurate trimming quality with one- or two-up production.
The modular design of the Mark III system means that the company serves cutsheet digital print engines with collating towers or a high-production, near-line sheet feeder for digitally collated output and variable page counts. When married together with Hunkeler continuous print processing technology, Horizon digital saddle stitching can be directly inline with a continuous digital web, or is capable of processing the output from multiple engines by converting pre-printed rolls to finished products in a roll-to-saddle stitch solution.
Saddle Stitching Options
Saddle stitching equipment, such as the options listed above; offer digital print environments affordable and efficient finishing solutions.
Click here to read part one of this exclusive online series, Saddle Stitching Solutions.
Apr2019, DPS Magazine
