Muller Martini Announces New Adhesive Monitoring System

At Monday’s Muller Martini (Booth 853) press conference, held in the Muller Martini booth at 3:00 pm, the focus was on customer testimonials the company had running a huge presentation screen, but there were some surprises in store. Anthony Quaranta, marketing representative, noted, “Muller Martini is an engineering company that is listening to what the customers are telling us. We are hearing that more and more. The evolution of printing products is faster than we can make equipment.”

Holding the company product introductions close to the vest, Quaranta was anxious to talk about Muller Martini’s nine North American installations of the company’s newest bookbinder, the Alegro. “I don’t think you’ll find any other book binder with sales anywhere close to that level,” he said, “especially in the last 18 months.”

Carrington Herbet, vice president of sales for Muller Martini, then talked about the excitement around the corporate announcement that, starting in December, Heidelberg will be partnering with Muller Martini to be servicing and providing spare parts for all its stitchers and binders worldwide.

Quaranta also talked about the success of the recent introduction, Granit, which is based on the Orbit platform and brings high-end trimming down into the price range of $200,000. It is designed for larger inplant and printers just starting to migrate to digital printing.

But the truly new news was the introduction of two productivity-enhancing products, the AMS Adhesive Monitoring System and the Dynamic Thickness Stitching Head. Both were so new, in fact, that they had just been delivered from the factory.

The AMS uses a laser to measure how much glue has been applied and whether there are adhesive application irregularities. A 3D image using distinct colors provides the operator with a clear visualization of the glue quantity, allowing the operator to fine-tune the quantity.  This not only ensures that the right amount of adhesive is being applied during production (as opposed to being evaluated after the fact), but also helps to optimize costs.

The AMS is available for new machines and as a standalone system to retrofit perfect binders with older control systems.

Also brand new at the show is the Dynamic Thickness Stitching head, set to be available in 2015. It offers the ability to adjust to variable product thickness on the fly, which is ideal for environments in which printers are producing personalized or customized products with varying numbers of pages or thickness of inserts.

The press conference was rounded out with showcases of newspaper and publishing products such as the Flexliner, which is having outstanding success in Europe, and the newly upgraded ASIR3 barcode and image recognition system, whose 99.9% accuracy is so in demand that the machine is being required by some publishers.

“Most people want to talk about what is coming next. We are also talking about that is existing and making money for our customers today,” says Quaranta.