Muller Martini Corp., the world’s leading producer of finishing solutions for commercial printers, newspapers and trade binderies, also manufactures OnDemand Web Offset Presses. The company is headquartered in Hauppauge, New York. According to Roger Bilodeau, vice president of sales, "Muller Martini has six manufacturing facilities throughout the world, including one in Virginia and another in Pennsylvania." Muller Martini is one of this nation’s leading resources for expert bindery and printing technology, and provides innovative systems, targeted training and responsive service to printers and binderies from coast-to-coast. A full contingent of personnel responsible for Latin American customers was on hand to answer questions and discuss and explain finishing techniques at the Graphics Of The Americas Show.

I had the good fortune to briefly discuss cultural and economic questions with Muller Martini Mexico’s Executive Director Hector Castro. I was plesantly surprised to learn that Mexico, unlike other countries, is completely in-step with the States in terms of technology. All of the major innovations are being utilized there such as thermal imaging, stochastic screening, PDF and JDF workflows. "We are completely up to speed and customers are utilizing Sunday 2000 presses, 6 color perfecting presses and Bobst slitters," according to Castro. In terms of market share for Muller Martini, Castro says they enjoy between 80-90% market share.

Ar GOA, Muller Martini demonstrated how stitching & perfect binding can build new business opportunities with their Valore saddle stitcher and AmigoPlus perfect binder. Valore produces finished products at speeds of up to 6,000 per hour. In addition, this saddle stitcher delivers a host of automated advantages at an affordable price — continuously running flat pile feeders producing a variety of formats, a cover folder feeder for one-pass book production, flying stitching heads and programmable logic control for fast set-up and real-time trouble shooting. These abilities give printers the ability to produce high quality books — tightly compressed and trimmed on three sides.

The AmigoPlus, a 1,500 per hour perfect binding system, is designed for short run commercial bookbinding, sample production and books-on-demand. AmigoPlus, like Valore, packs a long list of features into a compact finishing system. Notable is its precise glue and true side gluing applications, and exclusive backbone preparation and heavy-duty nipping tools which assure optimum book strength when running coated stock with heavy ink coverage, allowing for competitive short run bookbinding.

Heidelberg’s New Quicksetter
Heidelberg debuted their new Quicksetter 300E and 400E fully automatic CTP systems for polyester plates. The Quicksetter 300E is designed for the Printmaster QM 46 and the Quicksetter 400E is designed for the Heidelberg GTO 52 other portrait-feeding presses with a similar sheet size. Both of these small footprint plate setters handle film paper and polyester media, and produce high quality plates for run lengths of 25,000 impressions.

Both versions are designed from the ground up to be used with polyester plate material, and connect to Heidelberg’s MetaDimension front end — permitting color proofing within its normal, automated workflow. The imaging engine from RIPit Computer includes the InRIP trapping program and RIPit/Exxtra's virtual drum technology. RIPit offers systems that image high-resolution polyester plates to 3000 dpi and 175 lpi. This system produces a 10-micron spot size with .0005" repeatability. Keeping track of all this productivity is Adobe’s Portable Job Ticket.

Heidelberg claims a painless upgrade from conventional plate making to 4 or 8-up CTP platesetting. Customers upgrading to the 300 and 400s can use their existing front-end and only replace the recorder. Included in the price at GOA ($38,000) are two days of on site training and a one year warranty for parts and labor. Both models will be shipping in March 2003.