Print Solutions
Warwick Printing Company in Leamington Spa is one of the first printers to take delivery of Ashgate’s new KF640 bookletmaker and trimmer with the squarefold in line unit. It is a hand fed 640 mm sheet length bookletmaker, designed to work with digital and litho output.
‘We have a Kasfold 3000 hand fed bookletmaker, which serves us well for shorter runs but is limited and is unable to produce A4 landscape booklets,’ said Paul Young, director. ‘Our Xerox Versant 80 digital press has the facility to print a longer sheet which meets the growing demand for short run, A4 landscape books. Before we bought the KF640 we had to manually stitch the booklets which was rather time consuming.’
The company looked at buying a more automated finishing system. ‘We were originally looking at an investment of £30,000 to £40,000 for the more automated systems, but we found that these would still be unable to produce A4 landscape books which we required,’ Paul continued. ‘We had also previously considered adding the squarefold unit to our Kasfold 3000 though decided against this at that time.’
While deliberating which future course to take, Paul had a conversation with Lewis Price, managing director of Ashgate Automation. ‘Lewis mentioned to me that Ashgate would be introducing a Kasfold bookletmaker in early 2018 which would be capable of producing A4 landscape books at a more attractive price.’
The machine will handle a maximum sheet size of 640 x 320 mm, which means that SRA2 sheets do not require pre-trimming of the short edge on a guillotine prior to producing an A4 landscape booklet.
‘It is a robust, compact machine which, with the 640T trimmer and squarefold unit, fits well in our digital department where space is at a premium. It produces high quality books and allows us extra options for finishing booklets,’ Paul added. ‘It is a manually operated machine but for the shorter quantities we do, it is ideal. It has the versatility of finishing booklets from A6 to A4 landscape.’
The squarefold in line unit, supplied by Ashgate, which sits between the bookletmaker and the trimmer, is proving very beneficial and, according to Paul, does not noticeably slow down production. ‘We don’t use it all the time but some of our 48 page magazines are quite ‘springy’. The squarefold unit is by far the most efficient way to give them a professional, perfect bound look with the security of a stapled finish. Like the KF 640 it finishes booklets from A6 to A4 landscape, giving them the quality we require.’
