Thriving book-on-demand business optimizes its one-off production process with a Muller Martini Finishing 4.0 solution.

Based in Newton, Ill., Total Printing Systems (TPS) began over 45 years ago as a commercial printer and has since evolved into a highly competitive short-run and print on demand book manufacturer. Since this business has been steadily increasing, TPS needed a trimming solution that could efficiently process books of varying sizes. Last November, they installed a refurbished SigmaTrimming Center from Muller Martini. Explained Rick Lindemann, President, “Our company is extremely active in book of one production, with clients ranging from self-publishers to small presses to Fortune 500 companies. Since the volume of one-offs is increasing, we needed a state-of-the-art trimmer that avoided costly changeovers caused by books with different formats. And, we needed a trimmer in our price range. The cost of the refurbished SigmaTrimmer was substantially lower than a brand-new machine.”

The fully automated, zero makeready SigmaTrimming Center optimizes the production of high volume one-off or ultra short-run perfect bound books. It offers infinite trim variability as well as a barcode-driven workflow to ensure error-free data input and machine set-up. Other advantages include:

• Industry-first zero makeready delivers true 1,000 fully-variable books per hour production.
• Infinite trim variability within the machine specifications accommodates non-standard trim sizes with no costly changeover.
• Fixed-position knife station design with limited moving parts helps eliminate wear and tear and provides high-end commercial trim quality.

“Even though we were batching jobs together, the trimmers we used previously took about 25 minutes to changeover between sizes,” said Mr. Lindemann. “With the SigmaTrimming Center, there’s no changeover time at all. I don’t believe there are many trimmers on the market which can make such a claim. What’s more it’s very simple to operate so it helps reduce the cost of our labor.”

In addition, within certain production environments, particularly for binderies using multiple inline trimmers, nearline trimmers or flatbed cutters, the SigmaTrimming Center further expedites workflows. Bound, untrimmed books of varying sizes and thicknesses can be fed into the SigmaTrimming Center continuously without stopping to change parts or key in data. This also results in labor savings.