Nick Dingwall, the Bookbinding Specialist of Diamond Print Services Ltd. (middle front), and his team are impressed with the Diamant 60: “We would not be able to manufacture some of our products at all without the Diamant 60.”

Diamond Print Services was founded back in 1992 with just one saddle stitcher (a Muller Martini). The company then decided to move into hardcover binding just a few years after being founded, seeing opportunities there which were not covered by other print finishers. However, hardcover binding is a far more complex and expensive operation than saddle stitching, requiring not just highly trained operators but also a substantial investment in good equipment. “When reliability and speed is combined with excellent quality, and extremely fast make ready, like in the Diamant 60, then that is a recipe for success,“ stresses Peter Wight. The company has grown swiftly thanks to its policy of producing the very best quality finishing work, combined with top-class customer service. Since then, Diamond Print Services has won two UK print industry awards in recent years for the quality of their finishing work, thanks to their emphasis on investing in the best equipment available and continuously updating the training of the operating personnel.

Amazingly high flexibility
Diamond Print Services chose the Diamant 60 because it offered the perfect combination of speed and reliability.That is necessary for long runs while the very fast make ready gives them the flexibility needed to switch from one short job to another quickly and easily.As Neil Armitage explains “the Diamant really scores over its competition with its flexibility. I rate this machine very highly. We have an advantage over our competitors by producing better quality finishing and it gives us the capacity to cope with both long runs and very short ones too. We switch between different formats like A6 to A4 landscape all the time. Of course we can cope with even smaller and larger sizes too. In fact we are sometimes asked to produce just one or two products, as samples for our design customers. Many print finishers would do this work by hand but the make-ready on the Diamant is so fantastically quick that it is worth doing on the bookline. In addition, it shows that we really can cope with the design, when it comes to the full run. The quality of the work helps our customers to win the job!”

Diverse range of products
Diamond Print Services certainly produces a diverse range of printed products, as a quick tour of the factory demonstrates:A pile of bookblocks lies stacked on a pallet, each one with a flask-shaped cutout in the pages. Later a flask of vodka is placed inside, which is then hidden by the hard cover. “That's an interesting addition to any library!” comments Nick Dingwall, the Bookbinding Specialist at Diamond Print Services smiling. He then points out some of the tricky compact disc cases produced on the Diamant 60, which need to be finished after the plastic protective CD tray is in place. “In fact, some of our projects wouldn't even happen without the Diamant. This includes short run productions which are repeated from time to time every couple of months. The Diamant remembers the settings for every job, so it is easy for us to supply our customers practically on demand. It means that they don't have to keep large stocks of unusual and minor interest stock. This generally keeps their overheads low,” he explains.

He goes on to point out the benefits of the HMI (human machine interface) panel on the Diamant 60, which is used to control the entire bookline: “The external measurements are taken automatically. Fine adjustments can be made to the process while the line is running, which minimizes waste. In fact, the first 2-3 books are of marketable quality. After just a few fine adjustments, we can get the absolute best quality possible within the first 10 or 12 books off the line. The quality is better than with bookbinding equipment for digital print systems, and I would reckon that the set-up time is around the same,” he adds.

The specialty here is: A vodka flask is later inserted into the recesses of the bookblock:Just put a cover on it and your surprise present is ready.

First class service
The Diamant 60 bookline at Diamond Print Services also includes the EP 680 joint forming and book press and a BLSD 650 automatic book stacker. Although this bookline was one of the first installations of a Diamant 60 in the UK, the machine has been running very reliably from the beginning. “I have to praise the Muller Martini representatives in Great Britain,” according to Neil Armitage. “The service and support have been first class. We could not have asked for better support and we certainly haven’t regretted the decision to invest in the Diamant 60 for one moment.”

The smaller version, the Diamant 35, would theoretically suffice for short runs. However, the speed of 2,100 books per hour is easily outpaced by the fast Diamant 60 which has a production speed of 3,600 books per hour. “We are glad that we went for the larger machine” comments Neil Armitage, “as it gives us the best of both worlds, with the speed to cope with long runs and the flexibility to switch from one short run to another.”