Inkjet book line is hit for Timsons at Drupa

Timsons has reported a "Who's Who" of worldwide book printers making a pilgrimage to Drupa to see the new Timsons T-Print inkjet book production line.

The T-Print, which uses Kodak’s Stream heads, has been installed running inline into a Kolbus sequential feeder and KM200 perfect binder on the Timsons/Kolbus shared booth at the exhibition.

In four daily demonstrations the press is shown printing and binding at full speed, producing three different Royal format books with a differing number of 64pp sections.

The inline Kolbus perfect binder is changing covers and automatically adjusting for book thickness on-the-run.

Jeff Ward, managing director at the UK-based book press manufacturer, described the response as "fantastic".

"This is the right place, the right show, and the right equipment," he said. "We will absolutely sell presses on the back of this.

"We thought we were right in our thinking, and it’s been validated by the reaction, which is greater than we’d anticipated."

The £2.9 million ($4.7 million) T-Print has been developed with a wide web width of 1,245mm or 1,320mm. It has an s-shaped paper path that doesn’t require turner bars for duplex printing.

The press runs at 200m/min at 600x900dpi, and Ward expects this to reach 300m/min by the first quarter of next year.

"It feels so slow!" he said. "We are used to presses that run at 400 or 500 metres a minute. The folder is running at 50% of its mechanical capacity."

Ward said the company had set objectives at the beginning of the development project for the T-Print, with the top two criteria being the wide web width and minimal start-up waste.

The T-Print can begin printing at low speed, before accelerating into full production, thus reducing makeready waste significantly. 

Ward said he anticipated it would be used for run lengths  of between 500 and 3,000 books. Colour is also on the company’s roadmap.

"We’ve cut our teeth on what we know and we’re a lot wiser about inkjet now. Colour would potentially open up different markets beyond books, we’ll see where we can add value," Ward said.

Robert Flather, UK managing director at Kolbus, added: "Zero makeready industrial bookbinding is here."

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This article originally appeared at printweek.com