Finishing & Screen Printing
Colourstreams Perfect Bind
Wednesday 05. May 2010 - Colourstream is spearheading its push into digital colour book production with a PUR dedicated Horizon BQ-470 from Intelligent Finishing Systems.
The Derby firm is the latest mainstream commercial printer to bring perfect binding in house and founder and managing director John Greene, says: “We wanted to build up our short-to-medium run digital colour book printing business and to do that we needed to bring our perfect binding capabilities inhouse. This makes us much more efficient and we are saving time and money on sending work out – keeping every process under the one roof also makes our production smoother.”
Mr Greene decided on the automated four-clamp Horizon with large icon-based colour touch-screen because: “We knew that to create the highest quality finish we needed a PUR dedicated binder and the one from IFS was perfect. It is a neat and robust system that provides a strong bind. The layflat qualities and strength of the bind also combine to create a good-looking product.
“We work a lot with IFS and already have the Horizon StitchLiner so, when we saw how easy the binder was to use, its speed of set up, and the quality of the books produced, we knew it would be ideal to help us achieve the service offering we wanted to create.”
He also liked its ability to bind books up to 65 mm thick at up to 1,350 cph. The economic footprint – thanks to a vertical elliptical track design – helped to ensure space could be found for the kit while it also offered fully end-to-end automated and JDF compliance via Horizons pXnet NetWorkFlow system.
The PUR option was chosen because the cold melt glue does not react adversely to the inks and toners used in digital print. It also provides exceptional lay-flat qualities creating a stronger bond that will not be affected by severe temperature changes.
Mr Greene adds: “As we know glue will safely hold the pages together we can use a greater variety of thicker coated stock allowing us to complete a wider variety of books.”
A robotic HT-30 three-edge trimmer has also been added by Colourstream to complete the books. Mr Greene says: “This is a neat and efficient way of trimming the work off the binder – production is self-contained requiring less movement around the post press department.”
Colourstream specialises in A5 and A4 booklets for print management companies, Local Authorities, educational establishments and design agencies. It runs two 10-colour Speedmasters and an Indigo 5500.