Paper folding machines are designed to take the paper and fold it to a final product like a brochure or map or into a folded sections for further processing to a book or magazine. Mekes sells folding machines from Heidelberg, Stahl, MBO, Herzog & Heijmann, GUK and Horizon and more.
There’s basically two types of folding machines:
Combination folding machines: this machine has a folding unit with buckles and knifes. This machine is designed to make easily 4, 8, 16 and 32 pages sections, where the the first fold is made with the buckles and the cross folds with the knives. A combination folder model always start with the letter K. In the model you can find the infeed width, number of buckles and how the knives are placed. For example a K78/4KL has an infeedwidth of 78 cm, 4 buckles in the first group, 1 cross foldknife (K) and a second cross fold knife to the left (L). A K66/6KZ has an infeedwidth of 66 cm, 6 buckles in the first group, a cross fold knife (K) and 2 cross fold knives left and right (Z)
All Buckle folding machines: this machine has 1 or more folding units with buckles. Normally the units are positioned in a 90 degrees angle to make a cross fold. All kind of different folds can be made with an all buckle folder. An all buckle folder model always start with the letter T. In the model you can find the infeed width, number of buckles and number of folding groups. For example a T78/442 has an infeedwidth of 78 cm, 4 buckles in the first group, 4 buckles in the 2nd group and 3 buckles in the 3th group. A T66/664 has an infeed width of 66 cm, 6 buckles in the first group, 6 buckles in 2nd group and 4 buckles in the 3th group.
Both types of folding machines can come with 3 styles of feeders; flatpile feeder, pallet feeder and a continuous feeder, also called round pile feeder. The round pile feeder is a non-stop feeder, so you can load paper without stopping the machine, so this is very good for large productions. In the palletfeeder you can load a complete pallet with printed paper and in the flatpile feeder you can place a pile of paper.
All folding machines need a delivery, standard is a shingle belt delivery. It is good for the quality of the product and the productivity of the machine to have a delivery with an pressing roller to press out the air. Many different types of deliveries are in the market, like a Stahl SBP, MBO SBAP, OMG Valletto, Palamides Alpha, Palamides Delta.