i-grafix.com

Currie Group  installations 
Sydney’s Emerald Press is enjoying the benefits of a highly productive print finishing suite supplied by Currie. For director, Michael McDiarmid, the new Horizon is the jewel in Emerald’s crown Located in Castle Hill, Sydney, Emerald Press is on the doorstep of the huge urban development that is taking place as the population centre of Sydney shifts inexorably west.

Emerald numbers the affluent Hillsong Church with its massive congregation among its own flock of loyal printing customers, which includes local businesses, design houses, universities, publishers and pharmceutical companies.

Director, Michael McDiarmid, started the business almost 20 years ago, in 1987 and has invested heavily in the area both in people - he employs a staff of 28 - and in technology, to maximise the efficiency of quite varied print production for his somewhat broad range of clients.

As the heading of this article suggests, McDiarmid has been a very loyal customer of the Currie Group. In fact, when ap visited Emerald, it was hard to find a piece of equipment that hadn’t been supplied by Currie.

McDiarmid believes in the value of relationships whether with customers or with suppliers. When it comes to his very close relationship with Currie Group CEO, David Currie, and the fact that Emerald has purchased the vast majority of its kit from Australia’s biggest independent graphic arts supplier, McDiarmid, reckons he is very, very well looked after.

The Emerald business is highly productive from its design and prepress area (powered by ECRM Mako 4matic CTP, which exposes Agfa plates, all supplied by Currie), through to the press room which is kitted out with a fleet of four Shinohara presses (two five-colours, a 66 and a 75; plus two two-colours, a 52 and a 66), also supplied by Currie.

In case there was any doubt, Emerald uses Toko inks, solely distributed in Australia by Currie.

With all this firepower, McDiarmid had no chocie but to upgrade his finishing capability and once again looked to Currie to come to the rescue. McDiarmid had seen Horizon’s Stitchliner 5500 in action in Japan and at Ipex in 2000 and come 2006, he was ready to take the pressure off his finishing department with newer, more productive technology.

The Stitchliner crosses the gap between Horizon’s original flat sheet collating/bookletmaking system and conventional high-volume saddlestitching lines.

Offset or digitally printed flat-sheet signatures are fed from the Horizon SpeedVAC collator to produce true saddle-stitched booklets with full bleed trimming, at speeds of up to 11,000 two-up booklets per hour. Professionally finished booklets from the Stitchliner are comparable with booklets produced by traditional saddlestitchers.

The Stitchliner is set up via a user-friendly touch screen control panel on the SPF-30 saddlestitcher. Job changeover for the entire line can be accomplished in less than two minutes.

After input of all the job information, the system calculates and sets the position for size and register, scoring and folding, stitcher heads and clinchers, stitch wire length, the gap of the spine-pressing rollers, and positioning for head, foot and face trimming knives. Its icon-based intelligent interface can also be integrated with Horizon’s CIP4-compatible i2i system, allowing job set-up data to flow from a centralised production control station, with remote set-up and monitoring.

Flat sheets (four-page sections) are fed from the SpeedVAC and collated into sub-sets. The sub-set is jogged, registered and transported at a right angle through a set of scoring rollers.

It is then plow-folded and placed onto a saddle until remaining sub-sets (if any) have been delivered on top. When a complete set has been assembled, the saddle conveys the book block to the stitching area.

After stitching, the booklet is conveyed through a set of steel spine-pressing rollers to the three-knife trimmer where it is trimmed on three sides.

An optional set of centre-cut knives and two extra stitch heads may be fitted for true two-up production with full bleed trimming. An advanced error detection system with automatic reject insures that only 100 per cent accurate books are presented to the exit conveyor.

Since installation at Emerald, the Stitchliner has been quickly and efficiently paying for itself. Arranged in a horseshoe format, the versatile Horizon allows for one operator to be folding, stitching and trimming a job at one end whilst another operator is collating a different job at the other end, making it an even more productive asset.

“The Horizon has three towers and six bins, which are deeper than before,” says McDiarmid. “We can turn out a 72pp booklet from 18 sheets very quickly. Productivity and throughput is twice what it was before.”

Bernie Robinson, sales director at Currie says, “The speed and output quality of the Stitchliner set new standards of productivity and professional finishing to short-run booklet-making.

“Printers and trade binders can avoid signature folding steps and pre-trimming of flat sheets whilst the system enables faster, easier changeover for much greater levels of efficiency.

“By eliminating production steps and maximising efficiency, Horizon has provided a short-run solution that adds value to the finished product,” he adds.