SOS gets a good bind with Wilstead

A new Wilstead binder for short-run book production brings UK- engineer to Australia for the first time.

Richard Tunstead was a rather jet-lagged but busy engineer from Wilstead’s UK factory, when local representative Andy McCourt came by to check the installation.

“It's my first ever visit to Australia and I can't believe this is your winter," says Tunstead as Sydney basked in glorious sunshine. "Everything concerning the Fastset 60/700 is going well. It has arrived safely and thanks to great assistance from the SOS team, it was out of the three crates and on the floor within two hours of my arrival.

“Now begins the assembly, positioning inline with SOS's Horizon BQ470 perfect binder, powering up and testing before training of both SOS and local support engineers begins. I'll be here for two weeks but that includes a couple of days sight-seeing towards the end."

According to McCourt, who is also a Print21 contributor, the on-demand book finishing line will place SOS is a strong position to accommodate short and even micro-print runs of digitally-printed for publishers, the education sector and bookshops.

“It can change book sizes in only five seconds using pre-scanned barcodes, so the operators do not have to manually key in each knife change. Up to 700 books per hour can be finished, or if they are thinner books stacked 4-high in the conveyor pockets, 2,800 per hour. It's designed and built completely in Britain and the level of engineering is amazingly robust. It is a product for its time."

McCourt emphasised that technologies such as the Wilstead Fastset, digital presses and book-on-demand printing, will enable publishers and booksellers to respond to market demands more efficiently. "We read recently that the Federal Minister for Small Business, Senator Nick Sherry, said book shops will disappear within five years. He should get along to SOS Print and Media and see how the industry is adapting and responding to market supply-demand economics in both bricks-and-mortar bookselling, and online fulfilment."