Installation took about a week and the perfect binder was up and running in no time at all under the direction of the two Japanese engineers who spent two weeks ensuring it all worked perfectly.
Avondale-based Doherty Print Finishers ran an open evening to show off the new binder at its factory late in November and Erin says the phone has been running hot since news of the new machine got out.
The Horizon CABS 5000 binder is the first to be sold by agents AM International to a New Zealand company and Erin says the AM International team pulled out all stops to get it there and to ensure the installation went smoothly.
He travelled to Brisbane to watch it working in a Queensland print finishing company and says: “As soon as I walked in and saw it, I wanted it.”
“It is very operator friendly and there is nothing it doesn’t do. There’s just no comparison on speed to the two older models we traded in. Our problem is now going to be folding power because it is just so fast. I’ve been blown away at the speed at which it works.”
The new Horizon can produce approximately 3500 books an hour compared to Doherty’s previous average of 1200 books, and make ready times with the perfect binder are now between 20 and 30 minutes compared to between one and a half to two hours with the older equipment.
Some of the features Erin loves about the machine include its ability to pick up errors such as pages in the middle of a stack which might be upside down.
“The camera in the perfect binder picks up any abnormalities so if anything is wrong it simply shuts down until the problem is fixed. This means there is no de-collating,” he says.
Every book which goes through the binder is weighed and if there are any which don’t match, the book is rejected.
It also includes a three-knife trimmer so the finished product comes out at the end of the machine.
“The electronics appear to be far advanced of anything else we looked at and very little manual adjustment is needed once a job is set.”
