‘Web-to-Print’ Peterborough Publisher Steps up to BQ-470JDF

State of the art automation and fast set ups offer crucial time savings in any print business but the difference minutes can make in binding runs as low as one was paramount in CopyTech Group’s decision to invest in a Horizon BQ470JDF four-clamp perfect binder.

And the investment has certainly paid off for the Peterborough operation, which trades as Printondemand-worldwide.com, as it has recorded a three-fold increase in the amount of perfect binding it now completes.

Andy Cork, managing director: “The set up times are much faster so we can get through three times the work. But the key benefit is its user-friendliness. It is so simple to operate that we can have less skilled staff running it. Staff can move more freely around the machines so there is always someone on shift who can run it.”

The BQ-470 JDF is a four-clamp perfect binder with large icon-based colour touch-screen. It can bind books up to 65 mm thick at up to 1,350 cph and has an economic footprint thanks to a vertical elliptical track design. It is fully end-to-end automated and JDF compliant via Horizon’s i2i NetWorkFlow system. It also has a PUR glue tank option which interchanges with the standard EVA system.

Among the specialist in short run digital book production’s client are self-publishers and local book shops as well as the Oxford University Press and Taylor & Francis. In partnership with software manufacturers it has pioneered a method of book production that uses a minimal amount of manual intervention The web-to-print book production, for run lengths up to 1,500, has two key product lines - mono or colour books finished as softbacks or case-bound. There is a set costing matrix for quantities from 1-25, 25-250 and 250 upwards.

For new and re-prints customers can either order online via the company’s internet-to-print system, or distribute-then-print, working with the CopyTech Group’s joint-venture partner in the USA.

As such handling the output and finishing quickly and smoothly is a challenging process. Mr Cork explains: “We may need to produce runs of one, two, five or tens up to longer jobs. We can print up to 2,000 books a day in these varying quantities so we needed something that would be flexible enough to achieve this at the quality we needed. Also the automation gives us instant makereadies for the very short-run on-demand business, while the multi-clamp track will let us compete on longer runs, too.” 

Mr Cork looked at other systems from alternative suppliers but he chose the Horizon model because of its superior automation resulting in easy set-ups and fast makereadies – essential in the on-demand book printing market.