As sales manager of the company Dr. Günther Kast, I am responsible for sales, service and supervision of all tasks around our customer orders.  Besides these tasks, professional advice to our worldwide agents and arranged customer visits are of great importance.  To exemplify my various trips into different countries I would like to explain the typical purpose of such a trip.  Moreover, I will refer to a special technical issue, which attracted my attention during this trip.  The company Dr. Günther Kast has been in business for more than 30 years and does business in more than 70 countries.

Destination USA

Our agent in America, LBS, organized a common visit in several states at 7 customers in only 5 days. I have to point this out as these calls are connected with enormous distances by car or plane. The distance we travelled in the US would have taken me to many different countries in Europe. I will share my trips to other parts of the world in future articles.

LBS already knew the customers we visited, but not everyone has been using materials of the company Kast until now. Therefore, an analysis of the structure of the respective book bindery is very important for the recommendation of the best suited materials. I look at which machine system and glue is being used and if this is carried out with offline or inline equipment.

Materials/Quality

Each bookbindery has its own experiences regarding customer structure, quality standards and the materials they use. During this visit, it is important to find out which materials of the company Kast are suited best for every single bookbindery.

Due to my over 25 years of experience in bookbinding as a bookbindery manager and now as a material sales technician, I can say that you can achieve very different results for comparable products despite relatively identical technical conditions. You need to consider the state and age of technology of the machines as well as the qualification of the employees. Analysis will show if a paper, which is being glued in the perfect binder, shows elongation and doesn’t tear during rounding. At that point you may decide to try a Kast paper called 70/110Z, which is made with long-fibers and an adhesive in the pulp mix to improve elongation.

It is possible to achieve better results in quality under nearly all types of conditions if you use materials that are adapted to the respective situation. If you use materials best suited for your bindery you are able to produce more continuously with fewer stops, less downtime and less rejects. This leads to considerable cost savings. In some cases it is even possible to replace two materials with only one.  LBS can help you with trial rolls of Kast’s paper-lined mulls, GP 2R or GS 5L

Technical Issue/Recommendation

Following, I would like to refer to a special issue regarding the correct usage of backlining material as this situation attracted my attention very often during my visits. You should in any case have an overlap of the endsheet of min. 10 mm, no matter which material the customer uses. This means that the strip should be at least a width of 4 cm if the book block thickness is e. g., 2 cm.
> View a diagram illustrating correct book structure. 

Why should you proceed in this way? The case of a hardcover book needs a minimum distance of back inlay and paperboard to meet the mechanics of a book block. If the backlining material has a too small overlap onto the paperboard during casing-in, the book block is only held through the endsheet in the book cover. In the worst case, the book block will then be detached from the endsheet.

I would therefore be glad if I could spark your interest regarding a small change in your existing workflow and the materials used with this report. If you have further questions please do not hesitate to contact LBS or the company Kast at any time. 

Peter Martini

Dr. Günther Kast Company

Sales Manager

http://www.kast.de/