Mekatronics Inc.

Printers generally like to talk about investments they’ve made in print technologies—offset or digital. Perhaps that’s because it suggests they’re doing well and that they’re investing in their customers’ businesses. Besides, talking about a slick, new machine that requires little to no makeready time and gets up to color with minimal effort is sexy. Well, comparatively speaking. The clunkier “back-office” equipment found in the typical finishing department is perhaps not as provocative, but talk to most any book printer or trade binder, and they’ll likely confide that the bindery machines are the real workhorses. Indeed, investing in the bindery is just as important

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