Features

So you've invested in digital printing and a job comes through your web-portal, matched to a pre-tested job ticket it's automatically checked, driven through prepress operations, imposed and queued to the press. The operator checks that the right paper is loaded, selects the job and go! Now what do you do; outsourcing the finishing? Setup finishing equipment manually?

Welcome to the digital post-press quandary. If you are going to compete in digital printing, your post-press operations need to keep pace with a greater number of jobs run each day, most with shorter run lengths. The cost of manual setup or the time lost on outsourcing can sink your ship. So what are your options?

The three basic options are inline, off-line and near-line finishing. There are many digital press vendors that offer in-line finishing. For the printer, this means that fully integrated inline digital printing systems offers a high level of automation and productivity, and until recently, the only option for producing jobs where each piece is unique. The downside is that inline integrated digital printing systems are inherently inflexible. Offline automation is possible; where some specialized service providers can come in and retrofit your postpress devices with servos and consoles.

Near-line finishing allows for the same flexibility printers have demanded of post-press operations in the past, but adds the automation necessary to keep pace with modern printing. Near-line finishing has a disconnected paper path, but job and device control is networked through a central system. Near-line finishing systems have been on the market for several years and are available from Bobst, Colter & Peterson, Duplo, Horizon/Standard Finishing Systems, Itotec, Kolbus, MBO. Muller Martini, Perfecta, Polar, RECMI, SHOEI, Stahl, and Wholenberg.

These JDF-driven post-press devices save time both in setup and down-time. Printers have reported reducing setup times from 20, 30, 40 minutes or more to just a few minutes. In digital printing, where you may be dealing with tens or hundreds of jobs per day instead of a just a few jobs, operating post-press manually is not profitable, if even possible. In automated near-line finishing the JDF file, derived from imposition and layout and sent to a post-press controller either directly or through a print MIS, can be used to set-up each post-press device needed for a job, and the post-press systems can send back status and job processing data to be collected in the MIS.

Many digital printing jobs are best described as "versioned," meaning that there may be variations of a job for different target audiences rather than every single piece being unique. In situations where multiple unique or personalized components are to come together in post-press it is necessary for the finishing and inserting equipment to have a way of verifying that only related print components for the same recipient are being combined. The new Duplo DPB-5000 perfect binder is an example of a finishing device that has capabilities to support variable print jobs. The device uses barcodes to match book blocks of varying thicknesses to covers. A clamp measures the thickness of the book block as it moves through the machine and automatically sets the scoring and creasing of the cover to fit. The MBO DIGI-Finisher, the Horizon StitchLiner 6000 Digital Saddlestitcher and the Horizon AFC-566F Digital Folder are other examples of new devices targeted towards variable digital printing that incorporate barcode readers for component matching.

As more near-line finishing devices with variable finishing capability enters the market, the latest features of JDF in support of the dynamic capabilities of digital presses offers a clear advantage for printers in terms of the ability to more readily construct efficient production workflows.