A Day in the Life of a Print Job -- Part 4

It's quite normal to see customers back in the pressroom during print day because that's when you can catch any errors or irregularities before it's too late. But hardly ever do customers go down to the bindery during finishing time, so it was quite a treat for me to get to go back there today and catch my print jobs as they were trimmed, folded and stitched.

First up is a stack of pattern sheets ready to be trimmed.



The cutter trims off all 4 edges of the patterns sheets using the trim marks as guides.



The trimmed edges are then collected...



And thrown into a recycling bin.



The neatly-trimmed pattern sheets are then stacked up next to the folder.



The folder can have 2 or 3 or 4 units attached to it depending on how many folds the sheet requires. The first unit folds the sheet perfectly in half. Then the next unit grabs it and folds it in half again... and so on...



Then, after all folds are done, the last unit spits them out and stacks them.



The instruction booklets go through a similar process, except it's got more steps.

First they get stacked on the cutter...



Edges are trimmed off...



Then they go onto the folder. See that striped unit on the left side of this next photo? The sheet gets sandwiched in there and folded in half. It moves so fast that it's nearly impossible to see.



They come out at the other end all neatly folded in half...



Then this next machine (the stitcher) was the most fascinating to me! Check it out... it takes a folded inside spread and places it onto this moving belt then it drops the cover sheet on top of it and the nested booklets go down the line to get stitched.

In this next photo, imagine the machine moving right to left... first you see an inside spread all by itself, then the cover is placed on top of the inside spread...



Pretty maids all in a row...



At the other end, the machine places two staples on the fold of each booklet...



Then they get trimmed to finished size, stacked and put on top of this conveyor belt, kinda like what you see at the airport...



And VOILA! Pattern booklets are finished! Ready to be assembled, boxed & shipped...



Thank you all for staying with me through this little field trip. I so appreciate your comments and questions. I hope I didn't bore any of you to death... haha. I promise I'll get back to normal blogging after all this is done and over. :)