London – Ricoh is helping clients maximise their production capability by offering greater connectivity to finishing solutions through a new Ricoh interface unit. 

“Smooth end-to-end production with minimum stoppages and downtime is what Print Service Providers are trying to achieve,” explains Benoit Chatelard, Vice President, Production Printing, Ricoh Europe. “They want to be able to produce and finish print as seamlessly as possible. Crucial to that is the connectivity of finishing systems, which facilitates fast job set-up and completion. That is why we are increasing our connectivity to third party solutions.” 

Booklet making connectivity

The Watkiss PowerSquare 224 booklet maker is the first third party finishing system to be configured to integrate inline, via the interface unit, with the Ricoh Pro™ C9100 series and Ricoh Pro™ C7100x series digital colour cut sheet production systems, and the Ricoh Pro™ 8100 series digital mono cut sheet production system. It has fully automated settings for different book sizes and pagination, including variable stitch leg length to support different book thicknesses. Its maximum book thickness of 10.4mm is double that of conventional booklet making machines. This makes it ideal for books with a high volume of pages or those produced on thicker stocks. 

The small footprint system is easy to use with job parameters (paper size, book thickness and number of stitches) entered via a touchscreen. The PowerSquare automatically sets the stitch position, the wire draw length (the stitch leg length), the spine width required and the trim dimension. Job specifications can be quickly stored and recalled for efficient operation in the production of repeat jobs. 

States Chatelard, “Connectivity to the Watkiss PowerSquare gives increased productivity to the Pro C9100 series, Pro C7100x and the Pro 8100, making a significant difference to the smooth, efficient operation of PSPs.”

Banner feeding enhancement

Also being seamlessly linked via the new Ricoh interface unit is a new high capacity banner feeding option, designed in conjunction with the leading media feed specialists, BDT, for the Pro C9100 and Pro C7100x colour cut sheet systems. The new retrofittable solution offers easy access, and has a 500 mm depth which is more than five times the capacity of the current Banner Feed Tray, and so can hold significantly more substrate which means fewer stoppages for refilling. In turn it speeds up throughput and increases production. It will be available in Europe from September 2016. 

Adds Chatelard, “The very positive reaction to the banner functionality for the Pro C9100 and Pro C7100x series made it clear there is a strong appetite for this facility. We believe this step is a great solution for evolving busy production printing operations’ day-to-day workflow.”

He concludes: “We are committed to continuing to offer more choice, flexibility and productivity to PSPs. And we expect to announce a number of other finishing connectivity solutions in due course.”