UNDER THE HOOD / DUPLO ISADDLE 5.0 31 www.printmonthly.co.uk May / June 2023 - Issue 342 ► Duplo’s iSADDLE 5.0 is an integrated collating, stitching, and trimming system There are a number of ways we can fold and finish sheets for clients wanting stitched booklets. The issue is that run lengths on the majority of work are reducing, but the need for the professionally finished product is actually increasing. Clients see variations of covers and stepped products and think they can be produced for a volume of tens or hundreds. Beforehand this would have been a tall order; folding and then saddle stitching a product would have taken quite a shuffle around the finishing department prior to it being dispatched. Those days are a thing of the past with the release of Duplo’s iSADDLE 5.0, an integrated collating, stitching, and trimming system which has at its core an innovation of converting a flat sheet into a saddle-stitched booklet. A Clever Combination Breaking the system down into its key constituent parts is quite straightforward. Firstly there is the suction tower collator which stands nearly two meters tall and can handle a sheet 356mm x 610mm and from 52gsm up to 300gsm. Next up is the stitching section which has at its heart a pair of Hohner stitching heads which can if required be upgraded to three or four flat/loop heads. Finally, there is the finishing aspect of the system which is Duplo’s DKTS-200 trimming head with head and foot knives which can be combined if needed with the DBMS-T5 trimmer front knives. All in all, this is a very productive combination of equipment, the scope of which can handle a product up to 6mm in thickness made up of 30 sheets of 80gsm stock. Obviously if needed you can also make a combination of sheets, for instance a thicker cover with an accommodating reduction in page or paper weight making up the difference. As for size, the iSADDLE 5.0 can produce a booklet 354mm x 304mm in one-up production and this can be in either portrait or landscape depending on size configuration. Added to this, the iSADDLE 5.0 can scope out products such as stepped booklets and products with pockets and flaps. Overall the system can produce a wide variation of stitched products that normally would require complex subcontracting. Taking Care of the Job Having described the iSADDLE 5.0’s wide scope of product capability, this may incite an immediate concern over how each of these devices set themselves to cope with the next job. Well that is all taken care of by Duplo and the automation the manufacturer has built into the machine. A size or format change can be accomplished by scanning the bar code which you can append to the job pack, route FLAT SHEET TO BOOKLET The folding rollers within the machine are all automatically operated and there are double-scoring rollers with manual adjustment if needed Duplo has added to its range of binding choices the iSADDLE 5.0, a combination of collator and 3/5 knife trimmer taking flat sheets and turning them into a saddle stitched booklet. Brian Sims finds out more...
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