Finishing & Screen Printing
Samson Druck, St. Margarethen: Alegro: short setup times optimize production processes
Tuesday 28. May 2013 - In order to have high quality also in perfect binding under its control at all times, Samson Druck Ges.m.b.H. in St. Margarethen in the Austrian state of Salzburg has invested for the first time in a perfect binder. Samson opted for the Alegro first unveiled by Muller Martini at the last drupa because its short setup times optimize production processes.
Gerhard Aichhorn, owner and Managing Director of Samson Druck, which was founded by his father Erich Aichhorn in 1978 and today employs some 100 people, explains in a nutshell why the company, after many years of experience in saddle stitching, decided in fall to extend its range of print finishing services and to enter perfect binding for the first time: “First, our number of jobs has increased. Second, we want to keep added value in-house. Third, this step enables us to ensure optimal quality. And fourth, this gives us more control over logistics.”
The fact that Samson Druck can now dispense with some 220 truck journeys with a total distance of 60,000 kilometers annually thanks to having softcover production in-house, is just one benefit of the Alegro (not least from an environmental point of view). Far more importantly, by bringing perfect binding in-house, the leading Austrian printing house for high-quality sheetfed printing now has complete control over the entire production process of perfect bound print products, and in particular end quality. To ensure quality, Samson finishes signatures solely printed in-house using two eight-color printing presses with lacquer and a ten-color printing press.
Trend Towards Perfect Binding
Samson Druck, which processes more than 4,000 tons of paper yearly, has specialized for decades in high-quality (image) brochures, (customer) magazines and pamphlets, often with surface finishing, for various major international automobile, fashion and jewelry brands. “That enables us to stand out from the competition,” says Aichhorn. According to Aichhorn, there is a clear trend toward perfect binding for such high-quality products. Print runs range from 500 to 150,000 copies, although the number of copies is below 10,000 for most perfect binding jobs.
Samson Druck, which offers consulting, prepress, address administration, mail service and distribution as a lettershop certified by the post office in addition to printing and print finishing, has also observed a second trend among its many regular customers. The number of copies per title is falling, while the variety of languages and often the frequency of publication due to electronic (advertising) competition are increasing. In addition, and this is more an economic necessity than a trend, production processes need to be optimized due to increasingly short deadlines.
Three Alegro Highlights
According to Aichhorn, there were three technical features satisfying all market needs that convinced Samson Druck, following intensive evaluation, to invest at the drupa 2012 in the new Alegro perfect binding line, which features a 15-station gathering machine, a VPN nozzle for PUR gluing processes, a Solit three-knife trimmer and a CB 18 book stacker.
First, AsirCode, which guarantees the correct sequence of signatures in the gathering machine (“vital for us because of the variety of languages, which is why we print a barcode on all signatures”).
Second, the Book Data Center, which records all book measurement data for the entire perfect binding line (“without which I wouldn’t have bought the machine”).
Third, Motion Control Technology, which drives directly and controls individually all stations of the Alegro (“for me this is the highlight of the entire control system, because short setup times are crucial given our job structure”).
Connex Optimizes Processes
A further advantage is that Samson integrates the Alegro with the Connex data and process management system. With Connex, it is possible to optimally automate all Muller Martini systems, from a standalone machine to complex production lines. Thanks to this standardization, all machines can communicate with one other and, using Connex, can also be connected to a management information system (MIS). “For us that’s a very important point because we already have an MIS,” underlined Aichhorn.