Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 30)

the birth of the in-line perfect binder TOGE THER could be produced much more quickly and inexpensively than any hardcover, and the method quickly gained acceptance. Although perfect binding required less time, money, and materials than hardcover manufacturing, industrial-quality perfect binding machines even today are not what could be called “operator-friendly.” Originally designed to mass-produce popular titles, perfect binding production lines, to this day, involve massive machines that are hard to set up and difﬁcult to operate. But put a crew of skilled operators at the controls, and they can bind thousands of books with the same content and covers hour after hour. Unlike so many other industries, the digital revolution was slow to change bookbinding. In 1990, Xerox Corporation introduced the Xerox DocuTech, a commercial-sized digital printer able to produce runs of one or one thousand xerographically, in real time and—comparatively speaking—really fast. Even so, the design and operation of most commercial perfect binding machinery kept plodding along, unmoved by the advent of on-demand print production. BOUND Perfect binding comes of age for short-run production | By John Hebert I Innovate Spring 08 t’s no secret that digital technology democratized publishing, enabling anyone with access to a computer and an output device to produce and print colorful covers and page after page of books—from the simplest to the most sophisticated. But book covers and pages are merely raw materials. Once produced, they must be bound together and trimmed to become a usable, saleable product. Generating the content of early books often took years of painstaking effort; and their hand-sewn pages and durable, hardcover bindings reﬂected that craftsmanship. Tapping into the post-war population boom and fast-paced lifestyle of the 1950s and 1960s, publishers found a receptive market for “softcovers” typiﬁed by the paperback novel and popular titles like Readers Digest, TV Guide, and National Geographic. The Birth of the In-line Perfect Binder In 1995, the world’s ﬁrst in-line perfect binder was developed to work with the new Xerox DocuTech. The C. P. Bourg BBF2005 was fully integrated mechanically and electronically with the DocuTech output, uniquely able to match the printer’s speed and versatility. Relying on a single operator to set up the job stream, the new binder enabled corporate and commercial printers to professionally perfect bind documents of various sizes, shapes, and content on demand. With binding and ﬁnishing able to handle digitally produced output in real time, bookbinding at once became an integral part of print production. However, making the leap from conventional perfect binding to in-line digital production left a void in the market between tightly coupled digital workﬂows and mass produced single titles. This gap was ﬁlled in 2003 with a highly automated near-line machine developed by Bourg that could handle ﬂows from digital and offset print, and perfect bind one book or one thousand, quickly, efﬁciently, and at high quality. Mercury Marine Makes Waves In 2004, the ﬁrst Bourg BB3002 near-line automated perfect binder was installed at Mercury Marine, a $2.3 billion division of Brunswick Corporation based in Fond du Lac, These new books utilized perfect binding, the method in which the spine of the assembled signatures is attached by a ﬂexible adhesive to a heavier-weight paper cover. Perfect-bound books 30

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

Innovate - Spring 2008 Table of Contents 10 Tips for Successful Open Houses The TransPromo Path Escape the Complexity Putting a Price on Value A Welcome Boost to Hospitality Team Approach Earns Accolades Bound Together New Highs in Image Quality Transforming the Business of Processing Photos Predictive Maintenance Making the Right Choice Diving into Digital Book Production Doing More With Less Distributed Document Creation

Innovate Magazine - Spring 2008

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