Freedom to finish: Xerox takes time and labour out of booklet production

Professional-looking books, manuals and booklets are popular and profitable applications, but producing them can be challenging.

“With today's short-run requirements, finishing is often a major obstacle in delivering timely materials,” says Paul Haglich, marketing manager of the production systems group in the Xerox division at Bytes Document Solutions. “Xerox's new automatic finishing solution eliminates bottlenecks often associated with in-line and off-line booklet production - allowing printers to complete more jobs faster.”

Debuting at the world's largest print media trade fair, Drupa 2012, which is being held in Dusseldorf, Germany, from 3 to 16 May, the IntegratedPLUS Finishing Solution for Booklets offers the industry's first off-line automation by combining the efficiency of in-line with the flexibility of off-line into one device.

A new Dual Mode Feeder, available for the first time, allows an in-line finisher traditionally dedicated to a single digital print system to accept and handle printed output from multiple presses when operated in off-line mode. For example, applications printed on a Xerox Color 1000 Press could be wheeled on a stack cart to the Dual Mode Feeder attached to the new Xerox iGen 150 Press for booklet making.

“The operator simply scans a bar-coded banner sheet before connecting the stack cart into the feeder,” says Haglich. “The bar code instructs the booklet maker to set itself up automatically and the process is completed without requiring skilled operator intervention. The iGen 150 can also print another job to its own stack cart simultaneously.”

Other features of IntegratedPLUS Finishing Solution include:

* Automation to reduce costs - a touchless workflow in prepress operations boosts uptime by eliminating the need for manual prepress and finisher set-up - booklet jobs are pre-flighted and imposed according to the requirements of each unique job, and the finishing device automatically knows how they should be stitched and folded. Removing these manual steps reduces human error during prepress or off-line finishing processes and accelerates throughput.

* Open access - multiple print engines can take advantage of a single booklet maker, whether in-line or off-line, so operators can print one job, such as postcards, while a stack cart is wheeled to a finisher for creating booklets. This means print devices are used at their full potential, increasing overall productivity, and booklet makers can be used by all printers in the shop, optimising asset utilisation.

Availability:

Xerox's IntegratedPLUS Finishing Solution for Booklets will be available globally later this year.