Folding System from manroland Takes Digital Printing to New Levels

By: Ed Zintel and Nu Yang

The manroland web systems FoldLine, a folding system for digital newspaper production, has made an impact with its high performance capabilities. Witness what it has accomplished at Rotolito Lombarda, an Italian leader in printing services based in Milan.

The FoldLine finishing system for industrial digital printing can handle just about any print project from ultra-small regional runs for newspapers, to targeted advertising and print-on-demand book printing. Rotolito Lombarda is processing digitally printed products with the flexible, variable cut-off FoldLine folding system, using all of its features. The system started to operate last fall. An integration of the inline workflow system with an HP T410 Color Inkjet Web Press was planned for last month. At a recent technology forum at Rotolito Lombarda, the FoldLine was demonstrated to first produce a product that was a 24-page tabloid newspaper. Then, a Berliner format with 24 pages was produced, and, in addition, for the main part of the newspaper, two sections each with 8 pages were collected and folded to a 40-page newspaper with 3 sections. “We’re establishing finishing as a central system component in digital printing systems and ensuring integration into the customer’s workflow,” said Alwin Stadler, vice president of digital printing for manroland web systems. The FoldLine is able to produce newspapers in any format (tabloid, broadsheet, Berliner) in both inline and offline operation. It’s designed to produce up to 96 pages (48 pages broadsheet) with a web speed of up to 300 meters per minute and a web width of up to 1,067 millimeters. The system can output up to 7,100 Berliner newspaper copies with 32 pages, 15,000 stitched A3 brochures with 16 pages, or 30,000 16-page signatures A4 per hour. At last month’s AmericaEast Media Business and Technology Conference in Hershey, Pa., Ron Sams, manroland vice president of sales, said that with the FoldLine, manroland has “taken software that allows the print engine to talk to the finishing system and operate on one fluid integrated system. “The 300 meters per minute speed exceeds the volume of high-volume print systems,” Sams said. “Today’s print engine operates at 200 meters per minute. So, there’s a lot of space between print engine speeds and the FoldLine speed. There’s room to grow.” And the FoldLine is open to every print engine, from those of Kodak to Canon/Océ to HP, and so on. “Rotolito expanded from book publishing to newspapers, inserts, and magazines,” Sams said. “Now, with FoldLine, they’re realizing a very high utilization rate.” In the meantime, Sams said, manroland sold 11 FoldLine  systems to Hucais, a Chinese book printer that is also looking to expand to “books-on-demand.” “FoldLine has great applications for newspaper publishers in places like Chicago where you have a lot of cultural diversity and small ethnic publications catered to them,” Sams said. “It’s perfect for short paper runs of 2,000 to 5,000 and can quickly interchange to other products such as yearbooks and textbooks. As regional print shops develop, these companies will need this (FoldLine).” Muller Martini shows off SLS3000 Gripper upgrade At the America East Conference, Muller Martini’s show booth stood out with grippers from its SLS3000 inserting system on display above and along the edge of the company’s space. Muller Martini is rightfully proud of the SLS3000 Gripper. With its increased capacity of up to 1,200 tabloid pages, the new grippers provide a reliable solution by eliminating high wear parts. What’s more, the SLS3000 Gripper provides a deeper bite on the package then the original gripper so it easily handles a wide range of packaging production challenges—from larger page counts to uneven product thickness. Muller Martini has more than 45,000 SLS3000 grippers installed on SLS machines around the world delivering millions of newspapers every day. In addition, it has upgraded 26 SLS-1000 and SLS2000 inserters at 16 different newspapers with the SLS3000 Gripper. This proven design has been running since 2001 on the SLS3000 high speed inserter. The SLS3000 Gripper upgrade is not the only upgrade Muller Martini has introduced. It has also developed upgrades for the SLS2000 that enhance the repair system, the opening station and inserter controls, all based on technology from the SLS3000 inserter. Dan Cropley, product manager of the newspaper division at Muller Martini, said at the show that the SLS3000 Gripper can be made backwards compatible to Muller Martini’s older SLS1000 and SLS2000 inserting systems. He remarked, “For those who’ve chosen not to invest in new SLS3000 machinery, we offer valuable upgrade programs. It’s part of Muller’s investment protection promise. Just because you’re using a legacy machine doesn’t mean it can’t be upgraded to perform like new.”—EZ Three Questions with… Rick Sant, vice president of operations, The Orange County Register, Santa Ana, Calif. What has been your greatest challenge and how did you overcome it? Getting into commercial printing 10 years ago and changing the mindset of the people around here. We had to make them believe it would work and that we would get the business. We had to try. If we didn’t, that was worse than failing, so we might as well try. Today, we’re super-confident with the jobs and the employees are constantly asking for more printing jobs. Where do you see the future of print production? For us, we’ll be seeing more consolidation in the region. Overall in the industry, we have too much iron in the market. We have too many printers printing for free…there’s a lot of overhead, but not a lot of money. What printing technologies are you most excited about? Digital printing is very big, but personally, we won’t make money out of it. It’s just not for us. Rick Sant has more than 30 years experience in the newspaper, publishing and commercial print industries. He was named vice president of operations in January 2006 and oversees the prepress and printing departments at production facilities in Santa Ana, Calif. and Anaheim, Calif., as well as production equipment and general maintenance at the Orange County Register’s facilities across the county. Sant also oversees transportation, commercial printing, and packaging and inserting services.