IES58093B2 - A book production process - Google Patents

Description

The invention relates to a process for a printed book. the production of steps of offset form sections or folding the sheets to the sections, gluing the sections the glue and subsequently trimming to form a book.

Such a process comprises the general printing sheets, signatures, gathering at the spine, drying the other three sides sections is usually carried out at a such as that described in US Patent 4830352 (Portals Engineering Limited), stacks of similar sections are loaded which they Gathering of the gathering machine Specification No. In such a machine, into a hopper from are fed by use of a suction head onto a conveyor which is in synchronism with other suction heads so that the section drops onto the next adjacent section in the book. A process involving use of such equipment is described in French Patent Specification No. FR 2548965 (Veb Kombinat Polygraph). sections have been gathered, material strips glued to the In this process, after the they may be sewn and gauze spine.

The invention is directed production process which utilises available equipment more efficiently where there are very high volumes and frequent batch changes. achieve a low reject rate particular at the gathering toward providing a book Another object of the invention is and improved quality, and and binding operations .

According to the invention, producing a printed book, of : to in there is provided a method the method comprising the steps of carrying out offset printing of sheets at an offset printing machine, including printing a pair - 2 of identification marks for identification of the resultant section, namely, an orientation mark for display at the end of one side of the section, and a section order mark for display intermediate the ends of the section; folding the printed sheets so that the identification marks are visible at a side edge of the section; sorting similar sections together as stacks of sections; loading a pallet with a plurality of section stacks, the pallet having a width less than or equal to the length of a gathering station at a gathering machine used in the process; shrink-wrapping the loaded pallet; repeating the printing, folding, sorting, loading, and shrink-wrapping steps for a second printing batch; transferring loaded pallets of each batch to a gathering machine, each pallet being placed transversely of the machine adjacent an associated gathering station; loading stacks in the hopper of the respective gathering station for each loaded pallet; de-activating all gathering stations, except those for gathering of sections for the first batch by disconnecting the pneumatic supply for suction heads of the stations; gathering sections for the books of the first batch and carrying out in-process quality inspection by visual inspection of the identification marks; de-activating all gathering stations except those for gathering of sections for the second batch and repeating the gathering operations and quality inspection operations for the second batch; applying heated glue to the spine of each sorted set of sections; applying the book cover to each spine; conveying each book on a conveyor for at least 100 seconds for drying of the glue and subsequently delivering each book to a trimming station; trimming sides of the book at a trimming station; and carrying out final inspection before dispatch of the finished book.

In one embodiment, the stacks of sections are loaded on the pallet in an interlocking arrangement before shrinkwrapping .

Preferably, the spine of the book is roughened using a grinding wheel before glue is applied.

In another embodiment, the pallet is sufficiently wide for two rows of stacks mounted in an interlocking arrangement.

The invention will be more clearly understood from the following description of some preferred embodiments thereof, given by way of example only with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:Fig. 1 is a diagrammatic view showing a book production process of the invention; Fig. 2a is a perspective view showing a stack of similar sections or signatures; Fig. 2b is a perspective view of a pallet used in the process; - Fig. 2c is a perspective view showing a loaded pallet used in the process; Fig. 3a is a diagrammatic plan view showing some of the process equipment; Fig. 3b is a diagrammatic front view showing portion of the equipment in use; Fig. 4 is a diagrammatic front view showing the gathering operation for a stack of sections; and Fig. 5 shows gathered sections being transmitted to a binding station and one incorrectly gathered set of sections .

Referring to the drawings, a book production process of the invention is now described. Some of the items of equipment and process steps are illustrated diagrammatically in Fig. 1 and are identified generally by the reference numeral 1. Offset printing is carried out in step 2 and this involves the use of conventional printing machines. In this embodiment there are a number of printing machines of different configurations for printing of different numbers of colours on each side of the printed sheet. In step 3, the printed sheets are folded. For example, there may be 15 pages for each sheet and thus the sheet is folded along fold lines to form a section having fifteen pages. In the process of the invention, an important aspect of the printing operation 2 is that indicating marks are printed along some fold lines so that they are visible when the sheet is folded to form a section. In particular, there are two indication marks for each section, namely, a mark at one end of the section to indicate orientation of the section during the gathering operations, and a second mark intermediate the ends of the section for indicating the number of the section. Referring to Fig. 5, a gathered set of sections 50 is shown in which there are intermediate identification marks 52 which indicate the number of the section by virtue of the location between the ends of the section. For the sections to be in the correct order, the marks 52 must gradually move inwards. For all of the sections to be in the correct orientation, all of the marks 53 must be at the same end. Referring to the set of gathered sections 51, one of the sections is out of order because the orientation mark 53 is at the wrong end, although the intermediate mark is in the correct position. It will thus be appreciated that use of both marks in this particular manner greatly helps in in-process quality inspection. This is particularly true where there are a large number of sections and the intermediate marks 52 extend form one end of the sections to the other and back again in a V configuration.

Referring again to Fig. 1, in step 4 of the process the sections are sorted into stacks of similar sections and are loaded onto pallets. Referring now to Fig. 3, a stack of similar sections 19 is shown. In Fig. 2b a pallet 20 for loading of the stacks 18 is shown. The pallet 20 is of elongate rectangular shape in plan view. It comprises three ground-engaging support members 21 running the length of the pallet 20. There is a flat board 22 supported by the members 21 and on top of this a paper lining 23 is placed. The pallet 20 is of sufficient width for supporting two of the stacks 18 when placed lengthways across the pallet. The pallet 20 is long enough to support four stacks of 18 in the longitudinal direction, however, it may indeed be longer, depending on the size of the print job being carried out. An important aspect of construction of the pallet 20 is that its width does not exceed the length of a gathering station of a gathering machine, described below. As shown in Figs. 2c, the stacks 18 are placed on the pallet on an interlocking arrangement and are subsequently shrink-wrapped with plastics film 24. This is an important aspect of the invention because it has been found that by interlocking the stacks 18 in this particular manner and by shrinkwrapping them very little damage is caused to the sections and there is a very low discard rate. While the steps involved in sorting the stacks of signatures and loading them onto a pallet may appear simple it has been found that they have been very effective at reducing the discard rate .

The loaded pallets 5 are shown in Fig. 1 and they are transferred to a gathering machine 6, which is shown in Figs. 3a, 3b and Fig. 4. as shown in Fig. 3a, the process involves assigning each loaded pallet 5 with a particular station 40 on the gathering machine 6. The relevant pallet 5 is placed transversely of the gathering machine 6 at the relevant station 40. Because the width of the pallet 20 does not exceed the length of the station 40 the pallets 5 may be ordered in a single line as shown in Fig. 3a, there being one pallet per gathering machine station 40. As shown in Fig. 3b this allows an operator to easily access the stacks 18 of the loaded pallet 5 with a minimal amount of handling for transfer onto the relevant hopper at the station 40. It will be appreciated that if the pallets were not constructed in this particular manner and transfer of the pallets did not take place in this manner, then there would be a large amount of handling and it would be necessary for people to walk around behind one row of pallets to gain access to pallets in a second row and there would be more handling and less efficiency in the gathering process. As shown in Fig. 4, gathering at each station 40 involves loading of a stack 18 into a hopper 41 from whence each section 19 is pulled by a suction head 42 onto a rotating drum 43 having a gripping device 44. An L-shaped arm 45 moves in synchronism with the suction head 42 and the rotating drum 43 to ensure that the next section 19 does not drop onto the drum at the wrong time. It, in effect, supports the stack 18 while the lowermost section is being withdrawn. The signature 19 is dropped onto a gathered set of sections such as the set indicated by the numeral 50 in Fig. 4 onto a conveyor 46.

An important aspect of the invention is that the steps 2, 3 and 4 are carried out in succession for different print jobs. The loaded pallets 5 which are transferred to the gathering machine S may be for different jobs. The process involves efficient utilisation of the gathering machine 6 by transferring all available pallets for all jobs to the gathering machine 6 up to its maximum capacity. The suction head 42 for all stations other than those to be used for the first print job are de-activated and the gathering machine 6 is then operated in the normal manner. Thus, while there may be loaded pallets for sections from different print jobs at the gathering machine 6 and indeed stacks of sections from different print jobs may be loaded in the hoppers 41 only those sections for the first print job are gathered by the machine 6 in its first run. For the second run, only those suction heads at stations associated with the second batch are activated and so on. Thus, there is a very short change-over time between batches at the gathering machine 6. This is achieved by a combination of the pallets being configured to be directly associated with a particular station, positioning of the pallets, and operation of the relevant suction heads of the gathering machine 6. Because of the manner in which identification marks on the sections are used, an inspector at an inspecting station 30 of the gathering machine 6 may immediately identify faulty operation of the machine 6 in gathering sections for the wrong print job.

The gathered sets of sections 50 are shown in Fig. 5 being transferred on the conveyor 6 to the grinding machine 7. This machine has a rotatable grinding wheel which is driven to roughen the spine of the set 46 which is then subsequently glued using a hot glue at the glue machine 8 . At the glue station 8, the cover of the book is applied while the glue is wet and the unfinished book is then transferred in a circuitous route on the drying conveyor system 9 to a trimming station 10. The drying conveyor 9 is shown in Fig. 3a. On the conveyor system 9, the books travel away from the glue station 8 and then drop onto a lower conveyor forming part of the conveyor system 9 where it returns underneath back to the trimming station .10. The drying time is 105 seconds. The other three sides of the unfinished book are trimmed in a conventional manner at the trimming station 10 and are subsequently inspected at a despatch station 11.

It will be appreciated that the invention provides sequence of steps using book production equipment improves efficiency and production quality in production. for a which book The invention is not limited to the embodiments hereinbefore described, but may be varied in construction or detail.

Claims (5)

1. A method of producing a printed book, the method comprising the steps of:carrying out offset printing of sheets at an offset printing machine, including printing a pair of identification marks for identification of the resultant section, namely, an orientation mark for display at the end of one side of the section, and a section order mark for display intermediate the ends of the section; folding the printed sheets so that the identification marks are visible at a side edge of the section; sorting similar sections together as stacks of sections; loading a pallet with a plurality of section stacks, the pallet having a width less than or equal to the length of a gathering station at a gathering machine used in the process; shrink-wrapping the loaded pallet; repeating the printing, folding, sorting, loading, and shrink-wrapping steps for a second printing batch; transferring loaded pallets of each batch to a gathering machine, each pallet being placed transversely of the machine adjacent an associated gathering station; loading stacks in the hopper of the respective gathering station for each loaded pallet; de-activating all gathering stations, except those for gathering of sections for the first batch by disconnecting the pneumatic supply for suction heads of the stations; gathering sections for the books of the first batch and carrying out in-process quality inspection by visual inspection of the identification marks; de-activating all gathering stations except those for gathering of sections for the second batch and repeating the gathering operations and quality inspection operations for the second batch; applying heated glue to the spine of each sorted set of sections; applying the book cover to each spine; conveying each book on a conveyor for at least 100 seconds for drying of the glue and subsequently delivering each book to a trimming station; trimming sides of the book at a trimming station; and carrying out final inspection before dispatch of the finished book.

2. A process as claimed in claim 1, wherein the stacks of. sections are loaded on the pallet in an interlocking arrangement before shrink-wrapping.

3. A process as claimed in claims 1 or 2, wherein the spine of the book is roughened using a grinding wheel before glue is applied.

4. A process substantially as hereinbefore described, 5. With reference to and as illustrated in the accompanying drawings .

5. A book whenever produced by a process as claimed in any preceding claim.