Rotomail began thinking about book of one digital production more than a decade ago. It has since developed a full ecosystem for Italian book publishers, built around digital printing, automated binding and robotic wrapping to parcel the books for shipment to customers.
“We started working with Rotomail in 2006 when the idea of book of one was still very new,” says Tecnau’s EMEA sales and marketing director Stefano di Marco. “Not many were talking about print on demand even. Nevertheless we decide to jump in with the project.”
The first pieces of purpose designed and built equipment were delivered in 2008. That has since been refined in the light of experience which in turn has been poured into development of what is now the Libra 800.
“It’s about process optimisation,” he says. “Creating the book of one from inkjet printed reels without touching the book. It’s about print to the order as it comes in, finishing by order and then delivery by order.”
The Tecnau technology takes the reel, folds, cuts and delivers a book block into the robot arm which feeds the block into the binder. This is fully automated and can cope with different thickness and length of a book, adjusting every time and pulling on the cover, creased and cut to fit. The book is then trimmed and delivered ready for packing.
At the same time as production engineers from both Rotomail and Tecnau were developing and tweaking the original concept into the production level unit that now operates in a corner of the company’s bindery in Milan, software engineers were working on the web portal and application which Rotomail has called the Bronte Book Solution and which is available as part of HP’s Print OS initiative.
This is a complete workflow offering for those involved in the book supply chain, linking publisher, distributor, printer and even courier company in a digital workflow that eliminates manual intervention in the processing of a book order.
A new order can comprise several titles and the delivery details for that order. This is broken down into the separate components, but the integrity of the order remains. It means that even if Bronte accepts orders for dozens of copies of a title over the course of a day, it will print them in ones or twos according to the separate orders received.
There are three major components to the application. There is a dedicated website for each customer used for the distributors to place and follow their order through production. It is also where publishers will upload new titles or amends to those that are already in the system for order. “It gets the publishers through all the steps they need to add books to the CMS,” says Rotomail’s sales director Riccardo Romano . The CMS also handles the order processing, payment details and the communication with the preferred courier company. It also tracks the order through data collected automatically from the shop floor.
The third element is the creation of the job ticket for the book, again according to the elements that need to be prepared separately, body section and cover for example, assigning barcodes to track the separate elements through the different presses that Rotomail has. The job tickets are also used to drive the schedule and enter the order into the production process according to machine availability.
The Libra 800 at Rotomail can accept 20” and 30” digitally printed reels for finishing line. It can also have two reels of covers waiting slitting and creasing. One is a standard print, the other is laminated to cope with the options that are available to the user.
As a major HP user the text elements are going to be coming from its PageWide T inkjet presses, while covers can be from its Indigo W7200 web presses. The Bronte system has a strong interface into the HP Production Centre that runs the presses. It has an equally strong interface to the CMC carton wrap system that creates corrugated packaging around the stack of books that is headed to a distributor.
“This is print on demand for publishers who sell via distributors. It can be used to keep stock levels topped up in a warehouse or where the order cannot be fulfilled from stock, will raise the print order” says Romano .
At the same time, the publisher will be alerted to the orders for its books that are going through the system, either via the web portal or via an email as required. The publisher will always have full access to his documentation via the web site.
The Libra 800 is crucial to the business model. At Rotomail it is set up to cope with the five different book formats that the printer offers. It means that in sequence, the system will have to cope with an A4 portrait, a landscape A5 or anything in between.
“We can take any block at any size and we will still operate at 800 books an hour,” says di Marco. In practice it copes with blocks from 2mm to 40mm thick. A measurement device as the book block arrives in the unit, is used to set the creasing rollers and the clamp, milling and other adjusting elements.
Barcodes are used to match covers and body section and to set up the trimmer unit. “That integrity is important part of the system,” he says.
Quite so. Rotomail has come through the developmental teething problems, holding to its long term vision over the last eight years.
The Tecnau technology takes the reel, folds, cuts and delivers a book block into the robot arm which feeds the block into the binder. This is fully automated and can cope with different thickness and length of a book, adjusting every time and pulling on the cover, creased and cut to fit. The book is then trimmed and delivered ready for packing.
