Digital Printer Installs DigiBook 150 PUR Binder

The Digital Press, Dorset, UK, a long-standing producer of digital print with a track record of producing the highest quality printed products via its Xeikon digital color press had been using perfect binding for some time. While the company had been using hot-melt perfect binding, it was very familiar with the short-comings of this variant of the product, including the short life of a publication due to lose pages, and was seeking an improved binding solution.

Typical work for perfect binding at The Digital Press includes pre-runs and preview copies of paperback books for publishers, or final proof copies of some publications; short-run manuals; and property booklets.

The Solution

PUR is the strongest, most flexible binding adhesive available, offering several additional advantages over other hot-melt adhesives. When inks, coatings or digital print toners are present in the spine area these can often compromise the strength of a typical hot-melt perfect binding. PUR is resistant to this and will form a super-strong bond with all weights and finishes of paper stocks. In addition PUR works well with synthetic and recycled-content stocks.

The DigiBook 150 is Morgana’s entry-level product in its PUR binding range. It is capable of approximately 150 cycles per hour, it can bind publications with spine thicknesses from 2mm through to 50mm, in book sizes up to 14.7” x 12.5”. A key feature of the 150, and across the DigiBook range, is the patented glue application system. Spine and side glue is applied using an adjustable slot applicator allowing accurate control over both functions to give the best possible results. All the machines have an hermetically sealed glue and cleaning system which gives the quickest possible start-up and shutdown of the system with minimal glue wastage.

The Result

Commenting on his purchase decision, Peter Randall, owner of The Digital Press, said: “The DigiBook 150 is ideal for the busy digital print shop that needs to invest in short-run perfect binding. We have a regular requirement to bind 200 to 300 page books with very short run lengths. Our previous hot-melt system was simply not reliable for binding that many pages, but other PUR systems are simply too large, too complex, and too expensive for runs that might be as low as just half-a-dozen copies.

“The DigiBook 150 is easy to set-up, and is perfectly suited to run from 6 to 200 copies – which covers just about all of our needs. It certainly offers the best value on the market in terms of perfect binding solutions.”

“Already we have used the DigiBook 150 to up-sell customers to PUR binding. It is certainly a lot more robust than hot-melt, but is also a more attractive finish than wire-o-binding.” Digital printing at the company is created on a highly productive Xeikon 5000 machine.

Commenting on the installation Ray Hillhouse, Sales Manager of Morgana Systems, said: “This is the ideal unit for a print business the size of The Digital Press. If a small to medium sized print business is seeking an entry-level PUR binding solution, there really is nothing else on the market with this type of glue system that competes with the DigiBook 150 product. The unit offers few fancy settings, but for the run lengths needed by a large percentage of digital printers these are simply not necessary. Where more productive solutions are required, we have the DigiBook 300 and 450.”