Solent Design Studio has installed a Duplo DPM700 booklet maker, relieving a lot of pressure on finishing especially for a regular job requiring square back finish.
“We could find ourselves with a 16-20 hour backlog in finishing,” says managing director Martin Reynolds. This is because the Morgana it had installed to handle the square back job was restricted to around 500 books an hour on stitching work thanks to its sheet feed system. The Duplo operates at 15,000 books an hour, described as a “big jump” by Reynolds. It has three collating towers, opting for three in order to accommodate a regular job requiring 120pp of 80gsm sheets.
“We have customers wanting a lot of square back binding, up to 3,000 copies at a time,” says Reynolds. “The Duplo just eats that work. It is proving to be reliable and the operators are a lot happier.”
The booklet maker will be handling work both from its Canon digital press and its 22-year-old four-colour Ryobi 524. “It is in good condition and we still use it regularly especially on jobs requiring a Pantone or on letterheads which do not work well when printed on the toner press,” he says.
Volumes have fallen off steeply, with the company at one time consuming 1,000 plates a month and now using fewer than 200 a month as the Canon, its third generation digital press, takes the bulk of the work.
The Southampton business has positioned itself as a short run specialist able to run any job in-house, thanks to ongoing investment that has brought large format printing, wire basing, sleeking, laminating and foiling in house. “If we have a job that needs a larger sheet, there are a couple of trade printers locally and they can send us work that doesn’t suit their equipment,” he explains.
That will now include the additional stitching capacity of the DBM700. “The machine adjusts itself on the run and settings can be saved for recall. It is the machine that we aspired to three-and-a-half years ago, but it could not offer square back binding then.”
