A Look Inside The Collator Monday, August 08, 2005

We all know what a printing press does. Those who have visited Voice Of God Recordings have seen our large rolls of paper fed into the press to have these wonderful words of life printed upon them and then folded into what are called "signatures." But what happens next? Well, to answer that, lets take a trip through the collator.

The collator is a machine where the bundles of signatures are gathered, the covers attached, stapled, and precisely trimmed to size. On each book the folded signatures move along a chain, and the cover is placed upon them. At this point, two books are still joined together (top to bottom). The cover and pages of the signatures are secured by four staples (prior to being cut into two books.) The stitcher on our collator uses 1 million feet (189 miles) of wire every six months.

The next procedure for the signature is to meet with a series of knives, the first cut being made by 21" long knives, cutting the edge that forms the open side of the finished book. The remaining knives used are 13" in length.

The second and third cut will be the top and bottom cuts on what is still a double book. The final two cuts take one-fourth inch out of the middle to separate the two books. The finished books then travel by conveyer to the point where they are boxed and stacked on pallets for shipping. In one month's time, one million books will have passed through the collator.
These knives must be set so precisely that they do not touch each other, but yet will cleanly cut one thin sheet of paper. In order to maintain this precise cutting edge, the five sets of knives used in this procedure (an upper and lower unit) must be re-sharpened after about two hundred million page cuts (approximately five million books). This re-sharpening can be done around fifteen times before the knives must be replaced.