Foremost adds a Tornado for document finishing

Print Solutions

Banbury based Foremost Print has invested in new post press equipment in the shape of a Rhin-O-Tuff Tornado Autopunch system from UK distributor Morgana Systems.

The Tornado Autopunch automatically feeds, collates, punches, and delivers books offset and ready for subsequent binding. It is ideal machine for medium run lengths, filling a gap between short runs, where desktop hand fed equipment is sufficient, and print runs into the many 1000s, where a fully automated system would be essential.

Commenting on the new addition, Lee Woodcock, managing director at Foremost Print, said: ‘Our jobs might have runs of several hundred or maybe 1000 copies. We had been taking collated sets from our Ricoh printers, adding a cover, using a manual punch, and then placing that complete document into the comb binder. A very manual process. The new machine means that we can halve the man hours it takes us to complete the work – it is a tremendous investment.’

Punched sets can be taken from the Tornado to add the final comb bind while the machine continues to collate and punch the remaining sets, overlapping the stages of the finishing process, thus speeding up production.

Foremost Print specialises in the production of work for the medical trials industry. Several language versions of the finished pages arrive at the company. ‘We might need to print only 100 copies, but in each of up to ten different languages. We need to turn these around in just four or five days prior to shipping to destinations across the world. The Tornado has allowed us to halve the labour needed for finishing these publications, whilst at the same time providing us with a higher accuracy,’ added Lee.

The system can save binding service providers an average of 40% in process efficiency, dramatically reducing overall costs, say manufacturers Rhin-O-Tuff. Handling the widest range of media in the industry, the system delivers unparalleled flexibility and enables concurrent binding operations. Perfect for on-demand, short to medium runs the system includes easy programmable job set up.