Heidelberg is extending its portfolio for industrial digital printing and integrating postpress solutions from CP Bourg and Tecnau into its Jetfire 50 ecosystem. Heidelberg has entered into corresponding agreements with both companies. The stitching and perfect binding systems from CP Bourg and dynamic perforating, creasing, punching and cutting systems from Tecnau complement the Stahlfolder Fireline, which Heidelberg unveiled at the beginning of the year. Due to this complementary portfolio, Jetfire 50 users can produce various products in inline and nearline processes with varying page counts and final formats.
Sales, software, service, and consulting from a single source
Heidelberg is carrying out global sales, workflow integration, service, and consulting operations for the systems from CP Bourg and Tecnau alongside those for its own Jetfire 50 sheetfed inkjet press. As a result, customers can obtain all the key services they need from a single source. The availability of Prinect Touch Free will make the digital finishing systems an integral part of the AI-supported workflow control from Heidelberg.
“In line with our growth strategy, Heidelberg is continuing to expand its portfolio for the growing digital printing market step by step. By incorporating the postpress solutions of C.P. Bourg and Tecnau into our digital ecosystem, we are giving customers access to a highly productive end-to-end package for industrial digital printing production. Moreover, customers have a single point of contact and also benefit from the global Heidelberg service network,” says David Schmedding, chief technology & sales officer at Heidelberg.
CP Bourg produces brochures using stitching and perfect binding
The systems available from CP Bourg are the BBM Booklet Maker, which is a stitcher for stitched brochures, and the BB3002 Perfect Binder for adhesive-bound brochures. On both these systems, an integrated cutting module enables users to produce end products with full-bleed image motifs.
In addition to stitched brochures, it is possible to produce individual book blocks that can be made into brochures offline in a perfect binder. Block stitching in a wide variety of formats (portrait and landscape) can be carried out, as can dual and quadruple stitching in the spine, both with and without loop stitches.
The BB3002 Perfect Binder is a fully equipped adhesive binder with a milling station, a cover feeder, and three-sided trimming. The cover feeder is equipped for a possible thirteen positive or negative creases and the system can be operated with EVA or PUR hotmelt adhesive.
Tecnau produces postcards, coupons and calendars
Tecnau offers a family of modular products available for inline finishing of Jetfire 50 printed output. Customers choose modules to match their individual application requirements. If customers begin with a minimum configuration with narrow functionality, further modules can be cost-effectively added in the field if needs grow in the future. Tecnau’s modules for inline finishing with the Jetfire 50 include:
The Tecnau Stack 1010 cut & stack is a single-sheet processing system to convert inkjet output into finished stacks of postcards, posters, and other full-bleed printed applications inline or near-line to the Jetfire 50. Alternatively, BookReady is a fully automated cut & stack solution for book-block production ready for perfect binding.
TC 1530 C processor offers dynamic horizontal & vertical perforations ideal for coupons & tear-out pages, cross scoring and vertical creasing to simplify downstream folding.
TC 1530 P punch offers spiral/coil binding or dynamic ring-binder punching, expanding finishing options for diverse binding methods especially suited for educational materials, training documentation and calendars.
Stahlfolder Fireline – fully automated for everything from a poster to a gate fold
Heidelberg has developed the concept Stahlfolder Fireline for the production of cut and folded products. This machine can produce a huge range of products, from posters in A3 and A4 final formats and four-page brochures to eight-page A6 products with a concertina, parallel, letter, or gate fold. The corresponding programs are saved in the control system as standard. Additional custom programs can be manually configured and saved. The Stahlfolder Fireline is automatically preset with job parameters, therefore virtually no operator interventions are necessary.
With the opening of the Print Media Center, redesigned as the Home of Print, at the Wiesloch-Walldorf site, the new finishing solutions in combination with the Jetfire 50 are now available for customer demonstrations.
Postpress has often been the bottleneck in digital print workflows, so it’s encouraging to see Heidelberg taking this on with integrated solutions from CP Bourg and Tecnau. It’ll be interesting to see how this affects turnaround times and overall efficiency for high-volume production environments.