Near-line finishing of digitally printed content can deliver huge efficiency gains. But as any print professional knows, transferring a 20-inch-tall stack of printed sheets weighing hundreds of pounds from press to finisher is a difficult task -- and one that can disrupt the integrity of the collated sets.

To maintain the set integrity of digitally printed output while maximizing finisher productivity, C.P. Bourg the world's leading developer and supplier of on-demand document binding and finishing equipment, today introduced a new series of wheeled stack carts designed and approved to work with digital presses made by Canon, H-P, Kodak, Oce and Xerox Corporation.

The Bourg stack carts (trolleys) utilize an "air table" designed to operate with the Bourg BSF Sheet Feeder that makes it easy to transfer an entire 500 mm (19.7 in) stack of printed sheets from the digital press's accumulator (stacker) to the content feeding compartment of the Bourg BSF. The printed sheets can range in size from 203.2 x 177.8 mm (8 x 7 in) to the BSF-series maximum format of 660 x 364 mm (26 x 14.3 in).

"Owing to the Bourg BSF's unique air-table design, Bourg stack carts provide the critical link for 'set-secure' near-line/off-line automated finishing by allowing the pressman or finishing system operator, virtually hands-free, to easily load into the BSF and maintain press registration of an entire 500 mm (19.7 in) stack of collated output," says James Tressler, Director of Marketing and Branch Operations for C.P. Bourg Inc.

The Bourg BSF Sheet Feeder acts as a high-speed production gateway feeding up to 15,000-sheets/hour to C.P. Bourg binding and finishing systems, which can produce a variety of digitally-printed short-run finished products by the thousands automatically, without manual intervention. The finished products can include top-, corner or side-stitched reports and handouts, bound books up to 60mm thick, and saddle-stitched documents from the size of a CD case to oversized landscape-format brochures, catalogs and calendars.

A pioneer in digital binding and finishing, C.P. Bourg is a major manufacturer of high-pile trolleys and stack carts for digital printing environments, with thousands installed worldwide.

The new Bourg Stack Carts for all Bourg BSF-based near-line/off-line production systems are available from C.P. Bourg directly and from many of its distributors and digital press partners worldwide.

Several of the new Bourg stack carts for different manufacturer's digital presses are being demonstrated here at Drupa 2012, on the C.P. Bourg stand 13B69 and on the stands of digital press manufacturers elsewhere on the show floor.