Muller Martini

Acme Bookbinding's newest worker can't get injured on the job when doing back-breaking work. The reason: It's a robot. One of the most labor-intensive and expensive tasks in our industry is the chore of cutting cover materials for hardcover bindings. Generally, cutting cover materials is not a problem for large edition bindings. Kolbus and Crawley have furnished the industry with equipment where cover materials cut from rolls are de-curled, and are either sheeted or cut to size, with remarkable efficiency. Still, lifting a 54" roll of covering material, and mounting it into a cloth cutting machine, is hard, back-breaking work. These days, with larger edition runs increasingly

For book manufacturing constituents looking for cutting edge solutions to their bindery equipment needs, an early October trip to Chicago may have been a good place to start. Several manufacturers exhibited their back gluing, casing-in, casemaking and manufacturing lines at the 2002 Graph Expo. Exhibitors were pleasantly surprised by the number of attendees at this year's show (nearly 38,000, according to the organizers), lending an air of optimism to the future of the printing industry. BTM details the latest from some of the exhibitors who were on hand to demonstrate their offerings. Banner Banner American Products (www.banam.com), a manufacturer and distributor of pouch and

For binding, it's not enough to be fast; it also has to be strong. That's why Muller Martini (www.mullermartini.com) teamed-up with digital printing provider Océ Printing Systems (www.oceusa.com). For the first time this year, Muller's AmigoDigital perfect-binding system linked to an Océ DemandStream 8090CX digital printing system with Hunkeler paper handling equipment. The result: A workflow that will produce commercial-quality paperback books in a single pass. "We maintain that quality quotient by incorporating into the AmigoDigital the same perfect binding techniques we use in our high-volume equipment," says Andrew J. Fetherman, manager of Muller Martini's Digital Finishing Division. Based on Muller Martini's

By Cheryl A. Adams To stay competitive in today's fast-paced business environment, book manufacturers are turning to the latest in digital printing/binding technology. Using such strategies, they can print on-demand books, soft- or hard-cover, quickly and cost effectively, without creating excess inventory. "When rapid delivery is expected with each order — especially in the non-inventory, e-commerce environment — automatic processes become critical," says Jim Augustine, vice president of national sales, Xyan.com, King of Prussia, Pa. Indeed, in today's digital short-run book market, automatic turnaround often isn't a problem. Not even for quantities of one and case-bound books. In as little as one minute, a