Stitching Up Quality And High Output At Bookbinder

Coventry Bookbinders found 10 good reasons to buy the Heidelberg ST400 over a rival product, including its ability to stagger stitch, which allows them to create flatter and higher piles.

Coventry Bookbinders found 10 good reasons to buy the Heidelberg ST400 over a rival product, including its ability to stagger stitch, which allows them to create flatter and higher piles of finished product.

That is said to be ideal for mailing lines as a larger bundle can be produced without turns.

Managing director Karl Henley said: "We had a real need because the first ST400 is already working flat out 24/7 and we were turning stitching work away because as a trade printer we never take on work we cannot realistically fulfil." The company then called on suppliers to submit quotes but the ST400 was the better and cheaper option offered.

Among the decisive factors was that the ST 400 has more automatic make-ready.

In addition, it has drop back feeders, performs stagger stitching at the press of a button and the cover feeder can be positioned anywhere on the saddle.

It is also able to plug and play with other Heidelberg equipment including a knife unit and a pressing stacker, for example.

The ST400 features individual drives for each area of operation, automatic pre-setting, mobile feeders with horizontal and vertical options and provides optimum productivity because stitching takes place as the work moves along the chain, it is claimed.

It is a 14,000 cycles an hour machine capable of outputting 25%-30% more than the earlier ST300 because of its faster set up which is cut by half.

Coventry Bookbinders' first ST400 has five stations and a cover feeder and the second, which arrives in August, will have four plus cover.

The company plans to interchange feeders between the machines, which will maximise the scale and type of work it handles.

"This is the type of saddle-stitcher trade finishers need to keep ahead of the game.

No one wants to pay for finishing any more so you need a machine that produces quality work and still meets with printers' schedules.

The ST400 has very good quality and net output.

We have produced 70 million books (over 100 million if you add the two-up work) in 18 months on the first machine.

As a company we have a reputation for buying new because we can give customers confidence when we have really good equipment and overall reliability," said Karl Henley.

Coventry Bookbinders takes in sheet and web work from printers throughout the UK.

It offers cutting, folding, stitching, drilling, shrink-wrapping and ram bundling as well as hand and benchwork.

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