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Advances in Inline Digital Bindery
September 28, 2008

Yesterday, I discussed the fact that, for marketers with special binding and finishing requirements may want to ask extra questions about the binding and finishing capabilities of their digital printers, since the requirements for digital binderies can be different than for offset. 

Ideally, the answer would be to find a digital printer with the inline finishing capabilities you require, and while inline bindery is still the exception, inline "connections" for the digital bindery are growing.

According to Xerox, which partners with more than 100 third-party finishing suppliers, inline digital bindery “connections” are consistently growing year over year. The current connection rate is higher in the monochrome market, but the growth rate is actually faster in color.

Advances in Inline Finishing

In the past, for example, marketers might print covers on a four-color press, laminate them, and then merge them with black-and-white content from a different press. For cost reasons, even though the book might be 6x9, the marketer would not want to print 6x9, but print multi-up, then fold into signatures or cut into individual book blocks and bring it over to binder, where the cover and book block components are matched and trimmed to size.

This can be done efficiently at high volumes, but what about short runs or run of one? New equipment like C. P. Bourg’s Digital Book Factory, combined with Xerox Covers Driven Workflow (CDW), allow printers take multi-up sheets on a monochrome printer, print it at 9x12, perf it down the center, rotate it, and then trim or fold it to size.

Matching covers can be done by printing covers with the ISBN or barcode on the border trim, then pre-feeding the cover with the CDW feeder, which reads the barcode and tells the black-and-white printer which book to print. Binding specs are set up automatically along with matching cover to book block and the entire process is handled inline, giving the marketer multi-book cost-efficiency in a run of one.

This is just one solution, but it’s representative of the kind of advancements that are being made.
There have been so many advances, in fact, that even if the digital print suppliers in your local area can’t meet your needs, don’t assume that this means it can’t be done.

If you have a job with an unusual binding requirement, search wider. With the advances the industry is seeing, it’s likely out there somewhere.

Like this post? It is excerpted from "Digital Printing: Transforming Business and Marketing Models," available from Digital Printing Reports.

Have questions? Comments? I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at info@digitalprintingreports.com. For more information on primers for marketers and small businesses on digital, 1:1, Web-to-print, and personalized URL applications, visit Digital Printing Reports. You can also keep up with all of my posts on EBS, The Inspired Economist ("Greening Print Marketing"), and other blog sites by following me on Twitter.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on September 28, 2008 | Comments (0)