Miami Beach, Florida — The world’s largest manufacturer of postpress finishing equipment will focus on short-run high-profit applications at the 2002 edition of Graphics of the Americas, demonstrating its new Valore saddle stitcher as well as the AmigoPlus perfect binder. Muller Martini will be located in booth #787 at the exposition, which is being held in the Miami Convention Center, February 1-3. "The objective of our exhibit is to show printers who are looking to grow their businesses how to add value to the work they print by adding cost-effective saddle stitching or perfect binding to their capabilities," says Felix Stirnimann, print finishing division manager at Muller Martini USA. "Both the Valore and the AmigoPlus provide new profit-making opportunities for the printers that run them by making short-run finishing affordable." The Valore, which made its worldwide debut at Print 01, is a 6,000 copies/hour saddle stitcher that delivers a host of automated advantages at an affordable price. Its features include: - Flat pile feeders that load easily and run continuously. - The ability to produce a variety of formats and printed products. - A cover folder feeder that makes book production a one-pass operation. - Flying stitcher heads for tight and precise stitches. - Programmable Logic Control (PLC) which guides operators through set-up and provides real-time trouble shooting advice. - The ability to produce high quality books — tightly compressed and trimmed on three sides. The AmigoPlus is a 1,500 copies/hour perfect binding system designed for short-run commercial bookbinding, sample production and books-on-demand. Like the Volare, it packs a long list of features into an affordable, compact finishing system: - Top loading for fast, accurate production. - Can be run by a single operator to keep costs down. - Bottom feeding cover feeder with four-line scoring delivers crisp results. - Straight-line glue application and true side gluing produces durable products. - Heavy-duty nipping results in tight, square backbones. - PLC system simplifies set-up and streamlines production. The Valore and AmigoPlus systems at Graphics of the Americas will be producing finished products at their top operating speeds. The demonstrations will focus on how quickly and easily both machines can go from one short-run job to another, reducing costs and improving profit margins. "These systems can be real business builders for smaller printers," Stirnimann says. "They give these shops the opportunity to offer one-stop-shopping to their customers. That means they’ll be acquiring jobs that used to be handed to larger facilities." Headquartered in Hauppauge, New York, Muller Martini USA manufactures, markets and services variable size web presses and postpress finishing solutions for commercial printers, newspapers and binderies.