The Plockmatic Group, including Morgana USA and Watkiss, will be showing an extensive range of equipment for offline and inline finishing, including a number of new product launches (booth #1436).

The recently acquired Watkiss company, included in a Plockmatic exhibit for the first time, will be showing its PowerSquare™ 224 and the new to market PowerSquare™ 160 booklet makers.

The Watkiss PowerSquare™ 224 is a unique and innovative complete book making system for digital and offset print applications. It is available in three configurations: online, nearline or offline. In a single machine it combines the four processes of stitching, folding, spine forming and trimming to produce SquareBack™ books of up to 224 pages thick. It features fully automatic settings for different book size and pagination, including variable stitch-leg length for varying book thickness.

For inline production Watkiss work with all the major digital print engine manufacturers to bring you seamless booklet making solutions for production print, including Kodak, Canon, Konica-Minolta, Xerox, and Ricoh.

The show will be the US launch for a second Watkiss product, the PowerSquare™ 160. The machine is based on an open-architecture providing for a complete booklet making system that staples, folds, forms and trims in a single pass to produce added value SquareBack™ books. The machine will provide for the production of booklets from a wide range of sheet sizes and materials, including letter-sized landscape format and heavy cover stocks.

New to the US market from the Morgana company this year will be the Morgana AutoCut and Morgana RDC (rotary die-cutter).

A key product launch for the print shop market, the Morgana AutoCut Pro is the latest in Morgana's line of slit/cut/crease devices, which can also be linked inline to the AutoFold folding. As well as card cutting applications, it can run in “crease only” mode at up to 5,000 sheets per hour.

Morgana RDC is the latest release from the company in the die-cutting sector. The product is aimed at commercial printers producing cartons, labels, and personalised items such as business cards, greetings cards, and postcards.

Commenting on the introduction, Ray Hillhouse, vice-president offline business at Morgana, said: “The RDC has been designed to meet the needs of today’s digital printers. These companies are keen to handle as many finishing tasks in-house as they can. This unit provides the capability to die-cut, kiss-cut, score, and perforate, all in one pass if necessary, at speeds of up to 4,500 sheets per hour.

“By increasing the services on offer a printer has a greater control of delivery times, rather than having to rely on third-party suppliers. Die-cutting is one of those capabilities that is being demanded more and more as customers seek ways to make their print stand out from the crowd, and is an excellent facility for a printer to use to go and win new business.”

Another “first” at the show will be the new DigiBook 300XLPro. This PUR binder can produce landscape 12” x 18” softcover books in up to 2” thick and will also be making book blocks for casing into hard cover books of the same format. The latest developments in bookletmakers being shown with bar code reading for variable data book production.

In addition to these new products the Morgana AutoCreaser Pro and DigiFold Pro lines continue to set the benchmark for creasing and folding in their sector. The latest developments in both ranges – the Pro 385 products - will be shown with a new cross perforation system, along with a new version of the ever-popular AutoCreaser Pro 33.