After the press sheets are folded into a signature, they need to be arranged
in the proper order. This is called collating. Years ago collating was done by
hand. Staff walked around a large table and picked up one
section at a time in the proper order to form an unfinished book block.
Today, we use a machine to collate. The machine pictured to the right is used to prepare signatures that will be sewn. As you will see later in the tour, if a book is to be glued, the collating is done as part of the perfecting binding machine.
Signatures that are to be sewn have no perforations on the spine. Our Kolbus Collator is a machine that has 20 pockets that pick up the signatures from the pocket via vacuum and suckers and deliver them onto a track at the bottom of the machine.
The signatures' arrangement in the pockets is from the lowest page number in the first pocket, to the highest page number in the last pocket ensuring that the correct page sequence is achieved. The book blocks are stacked on skids and transported to the Sewing Machines for further finishing.
