Welcome to Books International Tech Sprinting. In our cut sheet area, we have four presses: one toner machine and three inkjet color machines. We have an i300 color machine, and also, in addition, we have two iX latest generation Canon inkjet color printers. All cut sheet work has to be trimmed and separated for the bindery.

On the roll side, we have two web presses: a T240 20-inch machine and a T490 40-inch machine. What you see here is the T240 color inkjet press. That press delivers into a finisher and a stacker. The finisher folds signatures into 8, 16, or 24-page signatures and then collates those signatures into a stack which is glued together for the bindery. Those stacks deliver at the end of the collateral to be palletized for the bindery.

Next, you see the 40-inch digital web press, what we call the T490. It’s black only, running at a thousand feet per minute on 40-inch white paper. The press is connected to a Muller Martini folder and stacker. We are printing 8 to 32-page signatures on this press, which are collated, folded, and glued in the book blocks. Those book blocks are palletized and delivered to the bindery. What you see here is the folder, two photo boards building the signatures going into the stacker and then delivering the book block to be palletized for the bindery.

Welcome to the cover printing area. We have two Indigos for our cover printing: Indigo 7800 and an Indigo 12000. All our covers print on the Indigos: jackets, case mount covers, and paper mount covers. The range is usually from 80-pound paper to a 14-point cover. The stock’s been loaded by the operator manually, then he performs his quality checks, and then he starts running the press. The press delivers pallets of product to be delivered to the bindery for lamination. He also performs quality checks throughout the run, as you can see right here.

We also have a MGI media press. This press is utilized for printed oversized sheets. The press is capable of running sheets up to 40 inches. We also use this press for our case bound printed foil process. We print black only on the case material, and that case material then is foiled in this machine. As you can see, the covers run through the press, and the foil only sticks to where there is printing underneath. Plaque only the machine is capable of very detailed foil stamping, which is being utilized by us in all our processes, POD or core.

The next section we’re going into is the POD binding. We use barcode capability on all our POD equipment. As you can see here, the Barrier binder is reading the barcode and then matches the cover to that barcode and also utilizes that barcode for the make ready. The operators insert the material, and then the barcode takes care of the make ready and makes sure that the cover is matching the book block. The operator simply feeds the book block; the camera beneath the clamp is reading that barcode and sets up the machine automatic to whatever size is required. You can see the coupled delivery right here again. Automatic make ready and adjustments are being made from book to book. All covers are cut to the same size, and the book block underneath is what changes. You can see here on the card that we run all varieties of sizes and colors at the same time.

The books are then taken from the Vario to the infinite trimmer. This trimmer is also capable of reading barcode, and we are utilizing that capability. The operator simply feeds the books (core jobs or book of one) into the trimmer, and the trimmer reads the barcode for automatic setup and data collection. As you can see, we trim different types of books back to back without stopping. The trimmer sets automatically each section of the trim and then delivers them to the end, where the operator performs a final quality check and then places those books onto the cart to be delivered to shipping.