Product Overview
The DDP70 printer from Ricoh Printing Systems America, Inc. is now available with a Publishing Finisher that easily keeps pace with the 70 ppm high-speed print engine at 6 booklets per minute.

Booklet publishing – online and offline
Online booklet publishing is done by requesting booklet finishing features: collate, crease, and saddle stitch for professionally finished sets with printed output. If there are more that 10 - 15 physical sheets in the booklet it may need to be trimmed. These features may be selected from the RPSA printer driver.

Depending on the user’s requirements several different booklet sizes may be created. A standard Letter size/A4 booklet will use paper twice as large as a standard page for input (11x17/A3). A booklet that is half the standard page size uses Letter size/A4 and is folded in half to Statement/A5 dimensions. This type of finishing requires that the paper travel through the finisher with the shorter edge leading so that it may be creased in half. Normally, most printers feed the smaller Letter size/A4 paper through with the longer edge leading to speed up the number of pages printed per minute. Rotating the Letter/A4 to feed in the short edge orientation will enable online booklet finishing, but it also slows the print speed some. In small quantities the process of creating a booklet online is usually much faster, even though some printing speed may be sacrificed, than the traditional offline production time.

Office users typically print documents of less than 10 pages in length and usually less than 10 copies, but some departments like Training, Sales or Marketing may have requirements for much larger quantities, special stock or special finishing. Typically, much of the finishing that requires a long life cycle, bleeds/trimming, unique stock, or book-style binding is “outsourced” to either an in-plant print shop function or a local print/copy shop. In this scenario the booklet is assembled and bound using a separate process from the print production.

While offline booklet creation offers many special features for finishing, it may slow down the production schedule significantly. The majority of booklets that are produced in an on demand fashion are often time-critical and not kept for very long by the user. If booklet finishing requirements are basic and the production schedule and life cycle of the booklet are relatively short, then online booklet publishing may be the best choice.

When booklets are sent somewhere else before the collation, folding, trimming, punching, and binding are done the risk of errors and the opportunity for needing reprints increases quickly. If the user is able to control the finishing through an online process the risk of errors and reprints decrease.

The need for printing large quantities of booklets is reduced in an on demand environment because only the booklets that are requested are printed. In this environment user errors that involve finishing feature requests or invalid combinations of finishing instructions are less likely to have a negative impact because smaller quantities are being produced. On demand finishing eliminates the requirement for large, outsourced production runs, associated errors, and the need to store large quantities of booklets in inventory.

One additional advantage of using online finishing is that it integrates well with the distribute-and-print scenario. Now booklets can be sent electronically over an Intranet/Internet and when they arrive at the point of need finishing can take place immediately after the printing process.

Publishing Finisher Key Features

• Saddle-Stitch, Fold, Trim and Stack Completed Booklets
• Insert pre-printed stock
• Full software control
• 70 ppm speed finishing
• High Volume
• Heavy Weight stock
• Tab Stock pass thru
• Stack & staple output with attached standard finisher

PUBLISHING FINISHER SPECIFICATIONS

Maximum Booklet Sizes

Stacker

• The Publishing finisher has a vertical stacking capacity
of up to 9.8 inches (250 mm) for 11x17 (A3) booklets.
• For booklets that are half letter size (half A4 size), vertical stacking capacity of more than 4.7 inches (120 mm) is not recommended, because the stacking uniformity degrades.
• Note: 9.8 inches (250 mm) is nearly equal to 100 booklets (5 sheets of 20 lbs.(75 g/m 2 ))