Ultimate Gangs Up On Prepress

Ever since the idea of workflow automation gained traction in the industry, the emphasis has typically been on automating prepress leading up to and including printing. However, postpress functions have often been given short shrift as candidates for automation. That all changed when Ultimate TechnoGraphics launched its Ultimate Bindery, and at last year’s GRAPH EXPO, the company made a big splash with version 4, bringing workflow automation and reduced “touch points” to the finishing process. Users were able to set up and preflight postpress processes during the prepress stage.

This year, in Booth 541 in the Workflow & Design/Prepress Show Floor Pavilion, Ultimate will be showing some of the new features and enhancements to Ultimate Bindery, specifically, new drivers that expand the number of finishing devices and systems that are supported by Ultimate Bindery. These include the Horizon SmartStacker which works inline with the HP Indigo 1000 Digital Press.

“This new machine has new capabilities that needed to be taken into account both in prepress with Impostrip, and in finishing with Ultimate Bindery.” said Joanne David, president and CEO of Ultimate TechnoGraphics. As a result, “There’s no job going to print that are built outside the capabilities of the machine. That’s the role of the custom driver.”

New drivers also support the Duplo 646 slitter/cutter/creaser, which is a replacement unit for the popular 645. The 646 introduces perforation, so a new driver needed to take into account his new functionality. Ultimate has a Duplo 646 on hand in their booth and is demonstrating Ultimate Bindery on this machine. Ultimate Bindery now also supports the Plockmatic Pro 35/50 booklet maker, which is a popular unit in Asia and Europe.

Ultimate is also launching a new product at GRAPH EXPO this week, the AutoFlow Estimator, designed to improve imposition and estimating for gang runs. Gang run optimization is required when print service providers want to print multiple short runs that use the same substrate together in one run. The AutoFlow Estimator software eliminates manual imposing of multiple variously sized PDF pages of different quantities and allows the estimator to better plan the press loads. Gang runs are created upstream by an MIS or a web-to-print system and sent to AutoFlow Estimator to get the best possible imposition for a press sheet or multiple press sheets. The software then communicates back to the MIS or web-to-print system the results of the impositions for final decision. AutoFlow Estimator is available as a module to Ultimate’s classic Impostrip imposition software, or it can function as a standalone application.

“The demand came because a certain number of MIS systems that have several modules and are very scalable but one thing that’s missing is the ability to do imposition,” said David. “All of them are strong in calculating, but none have engines to produce PDFs or generate an algorithm that will tell you the best way to impose a gang run.”

Ultimate is also showing new features and enhancements to Impostrip.