Inline from the White Signature to the Finished Softcover Book

Our finishing solution for digital sheet-fed printing that we presented at drupa 2024 attracted wide interest among numerous visitors to our booth. Now, Heidelberg, Müller Martini and Hunkeler will showcase a complete all-in-one inline system, from the sheet-fed press, to the Sheetfolder, perfect binder, drying path and trimming robot, all the way to the sorting line, as a world premiere at the Hunkeler Innovationdays taking place from February 24 to 27 in Lucerne. With the production of three different books, we will demonstrate live automated switching of formats and page numbers, that is book thicknesses, according to the motto “Inline from the white signature to the finished softcover book.”
 
“Should I, or shouldn’t I (yet)?” This is the big question many book manufacturers producing exclusively using offset processes to date are asking themselves when contemplating entering the digital printing market. But considering the current market developments – I’m thinking about the sharply declining runs per book title and the demand for customized print products in particular – in my opinion, it’s not a question of whether, but when you want to get started with digital printing and with which solution. Because roll systems require a significant investment, sheet-fed presses are ideal for getting started – especially since we at Müller Martini, together with Hunkeler, have the perfect all-in-one solution for finishing.
 
A unique, highly automated inline system
We will demonstrate this solution live at our HID booth. It is made of

• a Jetfire 50, the ultra-flexible and reliable all-rounder digital printing press from Heidelberg that can print both signatures and covers, also predestined for additional print products such as direct mailings and flyers,
• a Starbook Sheetfolder, the latest innovation from Hunkeler for book block production, developed specifically for the cut sheet segment,
• a Vareo PRO perfect binder with cover ejection (in the rare event that the covers and the contents don’t match),
• a customer-specific drying path,
• an InfiniTrim trimming robot
• and a sorting line, where the finished books are output sorted and in stacks.

 

This unique, highly automated inline system does away with the need for transport trolleys between the printing press and finishing area. In other words: They produce practically without any manual interventions – finishing 4.0 at its finest! In addition, each of the three sub-solutions (printing press/Starbook Sheetfolder/Vareo PRO with InfiniTrim) can change over to a new job extremely fast, and is highly flexible in terms of format and material.

Two highlight features: Pre-gluing and front trim option
In the Hunkeler Starbook Sheetfolder, the individual signatures are folded into four-pagers, which are then spot-glued and gathered. These auxiliary glued book blocks are rotated by 90 degrees on a spider and then, thanks to the pre-gluing of the four-pagers as stable book blocks, travel spine-first through the automatic book block feed inline into the Vareo PRO.
 
Running 1,350 cycles per hour, the three-clamp perfect binder from Müller Martini together with its ideally matched InfiniTrim delivers another highlight. Book blocks can be prepared for the production of fold-out brochures on the Vareo PRO. The trimming robot now features a front trim option, allowing softcover products with cover flaps to be produced in one pass. At the Hunkeler Innovationdays, we won’t be producing any fold-out brochures as part of our standard demos, but I would be happy to show you how the trim works based on an untrimmed fold-out brochure and highlight the benefits of this solution in detail.
 
Three different demo products
Our live demos won’t focus on book-of-one-production, instead showcasing small runs of between 15 and 20 units per order. Besides two A5 products with different numbers of pages (48 and 64) and book thicknesses (3 and 4 mm), we will also produce an A4 notebook with 48 pages and a 3 mm book thickness. The Müller Martini Connex workflow system is responsible for imposition and monitoring.
 
Some of you I met at drupa 2024, as we presented a similar solution, but without digital printing press and trimming robot. Now, we’re stepping up our game at the Hunkeler Innovationdays with the Jetfire 50 at the front and the InfiniTrim at the back, showcasing this compact all-in-one line for the first time ever. I look forward to giving you a live demonstration in Lucerne!
 
Yours,
Ronald Reddmann, Product Manager Softcover Systems, Müller Martini