Hot Minute Ep. 6 - Horizon Folder Automation with JD Mackie

In this episode of Hot Minute, Bryan Takano is joined by JD Mackie to talk about his favorite folder, the Horizon iCE FOLDER AFV-566FKT, and how its automation saves users time and helps future proof their business.

JD Mackie is a Senior Service Engineer for our US distributor Standard Finishing Systems and has over 42 years of experience with bindery equipment, specializing in folders.

Learn more about the iCE FOLDER AFV-56K Series:
https://www.horizon.co.jp/products/en/products/folders/afv56k_e/afv56k_e.html

Listen on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/PCMhRLGhTmg

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Transcript

[Bryan]

Konnichiwa and hi everyone. Welcome to Hot Minute with Horizon. I'm your host, Bryan Takano. Hot Minute is the official podcast of the Horizon Group that's created to provide you with the latest news and information, about Horizon, our solutions, and global finishing trends. We want to keep things short and sweet, so let's jump right in..

Welcome. I'm joined today by JD Mackie, Senior Service Engineer at Standard Finishing, which is our North American distributing partner. So today I want to talk about folding because JD is actually very knowledgeable, and he seems to like our folders. Right, JD? 

[JD]

Yeah. Yes. I do.

[Bryan]

 So thank you for joining me today.

[JD]

All right. Thanks Bryan. 

[Bryan]

So before we begin, maybe we can start off with a simple introduction, about yourself and maybe your career background.

[JD]

Okay. I started when I was in high school working in print shops and binderies. Working mostly primarily on bindery equipment and some press repair along the way too. Printing. But basically, I've been doing bindery most of my career, so for 42 years, I've been in one form or another working on bindery. 

[Bryan]

And you didn't figure that out until you started preparing for this podcast, right?

[JD]

Right. Yeah, I did the math and figured out I'm a lot older than I thought I was. Yeah. Yeah, it's good to know. Thank you for that. 

[Bryan]

Well, I'm sorry about that, but it's good to know how much experience you have because you worked at a sub dealer or before you came to Standard right? 

[JD]

Yeah, before I actually came on board with Horizon.

I was working with one of Horizon's dealers in the US. So… 

[Bryan]

And that was over 20 years.. 30 years [ago]?

[JD]

Yeah, I was about 30 years ago. And then at one point, I had my own business doing bindery repair in New England for I think about 5 or 6 years. I left the dealer and I did it on my own, and the dealer bought me out and brought me back.

[Bryan]

That's great. And now you're with Standard?

[JD]

Now I’m with Standard. Yeah. 

[Bryan]

Great. So you're not, you don't work with just folders, right? But… 

[JD]

No.

[Bryan]

Originally you started with folders? or with binders?

[JD]

With Standard I, I started where I was going to be, local service, just doing general bindery equipment, just doing sort of everything.

And then within a few months, it turned into.. I took on the role of their product specialist regarding folders, and then I've also had a lot of experience working on your bindery equipment or binder equipment. So I’ve also been starting to share a lot of my responsibilities as far as the folding goes and taking on more and more responsibilities with the smart binding lines.

[Bryan]

Great. So, you mentioned the folders. When did you start getting involved with folders? When did you start learning about folders? 

[JD]

When I was 15, an old lady taught me how to run my first folder. She was very nice. But I've been running them since I was 15, so folders have come a long way since…since then.

[Bryan]

And I hear that you like our Horizon folders so..

[JD]

Very much. Yeah.. yeah.

[Bryan]

And you've also worked with other manufacturers' folders as well?

[JD]

Yeah.. yeah, I've actually done, I, the company I worked for, Service General, so they'd work on other people's equipment.

[Bryan]

And I hear that one of your favorite folders is the AFV-566FKT

[JD]

Yeah. Yeah. That’s.. that thing’s awesome. 

[Bryan]

So tell us, why do you like this folder?

[JD]

So the predecessor to that folder was the AKT. Yeah. That was a great folder. Super popular, training on it was… the training on it was fairly simple to get operators to understand what to do. 

The complications came in with that were that much of it was still actually manual, like having to hand mount side guides, into the, or stops into the knife fold sections… or section. There were still a lot of things that you had to either manually adjust or physically look at, like the tail wheels. And so it was still tricky for operators with no experience to get.

For operators that had experience, this thing was a gift. You know, it did everything they wanted to do, they had to do very little manually, and they were so used to doing things manually, they were thrilled. The new machine took everything I think any operator, customer, technician ever said and sent you guys a note on and said, well, you know, it'd be nice if or it'd be better if this wasn't this way, or it would be simpler for the operators if they didn't have to look here or adjust this by eye. 

[Bryan]

So you saw a lot of your requests [answered]?

[JD]

Yeah. 

[Bryan]

Then, Horizon they actually listened to it 

[JD]

Yeah they saw all of it. It was really weird. You send notes in and you don't really expect people are going to pay any attention, and they get a machine that when that machine got released and came in, we all just sat there playing with it going look the stops solid now, where it used to be a finger in the sheets, all the guides set automatically there's no more manual adjustment. 

There's even, on super finicky jobs, you'd have to dial in tail wheels manually or by eye and see. And there was techniques to doing it that could trip up an operator. Now you hit a button and it goes into this whole cycle where it automatically, you know, comes in and out until it finds a perfect spot.

And then now the machine, the FKT, it's fully automated. There is nothing in there that's not. Including all the things that are becoming current on other folders as well. But where they put in vacuum belts, instead of dragging marbles over the sock, which on current printing methods tend to mark more and more and more. So giving that vacuum control and simplifying things where everything's book of one or data stream sensitive.

So now if I get a double (feed) on something at full speed on that machine, we’re running 200m a minute, running 37,000 sheets an hour on a letter fold, and it'll pull a double, and it will literally stop right in the middle of the register board, where I just lift it up, I take it out. The machine's super intuitive.

So when, say that double situation happens, it'll stop right where I can still take those sheets out. When I lift the cover, it lifts all the guides out of my way. And then it also lowers my feeder back down six inches so I can just take the sheets and put them back on the pile and maintain that order or that mail stream.

Then when you hit go, it just brings everything back up. It waits and then turns on the air, all little things. But, as far as making a really, you know, really smooth operation, you’re able to jump around quickly and make the machine perform really well without having to do, you know, very much as far as the operator.

[Bryan]

Yeah. You can get operators up and running really quickly. I've seen, I believe the first time we met was at Printing United, 2022 and just watching you, kind of show people the machine itself, you were having them run it. 

[JD]

Yeah. 

[Bryan]

And kind of explaining it so people that had just come to the show and saw it there within five minutes, they were able to set up a job.

[JD]

Yeah. It's, and some of those jobs like to do a small format, map, you know? 
So an accordion fold, say a seven-panel accordion fold, fold it in half again to make a pocket map or a small map is one of the hardest folds you can get on a folder because once you dial in all the fold plates, if you have to make any changes, you have to redial every fold plate in.

One of the things Horizon has is you hit one button, enter a difference, because all the fold plates will be exact one behind the other. Then all your panels will line up perfectly, but it might be a long tail or a short tail, depending on the speed of the machine. In this case, all you have to do is measure that tail, enter one measurement, and it automatically adjusts six fold plates.

So, it's particularly impressive when somebody who's run a folder actually comes to watch. And then you show on this fold and go, okay, how long would this take? And I've never had anyone argue with 3 to 4 hours. It's a half day setup. 

By the time you dial an old folder in or even some of the newer competitors’ in, being able to just go to that button, hit jump and go, you know, being able to do that fold in about a minute? You know, that set up in a minute? 

One operator or one customer brought his daughter to Printing United last year and she was like 16. I said, “do you work in your dad's shop?” 

She said, “yeah.” 

I said, “you work on the folders.” 

And she just shook her head like I was insane. “No, I don't run those.” 

I said “well, come here," and I stepped her up, and I started her: “here Push this, push this.” Then I turned around to get something and I heard the console start beeping because she was doing things all by herself. 

I turn around and go “what are you doing?” 

She said “Well it would ask questions.  so I'm just answering it.”

“Well, there you go now you know how to run a Horizon folder.”  And she set up the pocket map. Her father almost fell over. 

He’s like “oh my.. okay” so.

[Bryan]

Great. That's an awesome story. The.. It kind of shows how much of a lifesaver it will be for people up and coming in the future I think, because it's getting harder and harder for print shops to find people that can operate folders.

[JD]

Yeah. 

[Bryan]

I mean, it's sad that we can’t, that that knowledge is kind of going away, but at the same time, there's nothing that’s going to make it go back in time. So we can only keep going, But having this automation we’ll be able to allow print shops to kind of survive without the extremely knowledgeable operators.

[JD]

Yeah. When I do demos with the machine, one of the things I like to point out is I'll do maybe ten different setups, you know, one, it takes like a minute for each setup, especially if they're in the memory. 

And I'll blast off these setups and then talk to the customer, “it isn't how fast the folder runs, It's a very fast folder, but all folders are very fast.

It's not that that's saving money or saving on time, it's the fact that I can do those ten setups [fast]." 

If you say this: “let's say this setup was a half hour. This one is a half hour, this one.. let's say an hour,” and I'm staying under what it likely is, “let's say this one was three hours..”

I say, “so easily I just saved you one day of your week. So you just got a whole day of time back into your shop. You’ve literally gained a day of time. It's not the speed of the machine, which is very fast. It's the speed of setup and the ease of setup on them.” 

That's the difference when you go to work on, competitor's machine.

Yeah, one has pluses and minuses and everything has a plus or minus to it. But none of those machines automation can touch Horizon’s [automation]. 

None of them. 

I mean, I know how to use them all, I know how to work on them all, I know how to run all those, their operator interfaces. But the fact is to go… to do what you can do on the Horizon, it's very, it's much more complicated to do it on their systems. 

It's not nearly as intuitive. One, the Horizon is made for how an operator looks at it. Operators are used to looking at that picture of the rollers and fold plates glued to the side of every folder ever made.

It shows the roller chain, and that's how you have to think and figure things out, so they give you a picture of that. 

Horizon has put that into the screen, and then given each adjustment for each one of those things right there. So any operator who’s even run a folder a little can quickly look at that and quickly understand. But even more importantly, it's easier for a new operator to understand now because it’s right there and the adjustments are right there.

You go to a competitor's machine. None of them tried to build a folder and just keep the automation growing. They've sort of played catch up when they realized people really want it on there. 

The way they've done the system, it's more just enter into a shadow box a number, you need to know what that is, the diagrams aren’t so intuitive where you look at it and go, “oh, that's literally a drawing of this, that's literally a drawing of this.” 

So it's much harder to get through. But more importantly, none of it's intuitive. So if you want to move, make a move on the register guide on our folder, and you tell that register guide to go towards the non-op [non-operator] side of the machine, which is going to push your score chain, make other changes you want without going..

It'll intuitively know that move the outside guide to move the next fold plate, to move both the guides in the FKT.. It knows, if you're doing this, then we need to do all of this too, so the operator doesn't have to think and figure that out. When any other system they have to actually go in and make every one of those adjustments individually.

A huge thing for trying to teach people how to do this. 

[Bryan]

Speaking of new operators and everything. What would you recommend for people who are trying to get into folding?

[JD]

You know what, if you're really trying to learn folding and you're trying to get an understanding of it more than just the automation on a machine. There's literature out there that surely gets you a basic understanding but there's not going to be anything better than working with, you know, all these you know, people my age or older that are sort of aging out. 

You know, spending time with them to understand why the machine does what it does and what's really happening inside the machine. See. Other equipment like saddle binders, or perfect binders, you can kind of follow it along and watch what happens and in a folder you can’t.

Everything happens inside and it's not like you can have a little hole that's going to [allow you to] see in there or anything. You just have to take the piece and then look at it and make decisions to why. 

There's tricks involved where you can separate, “is it rollers, is it registers, is it a fold plate?” But that's just stuff that you know, gaining the experience from an operator is helpful. 

Fortunately, I know with Horizon and with our, you know, with Standard in the US, we have people qualified to go out and show them that stuff.

So we're able to teach people when they buy a piece of our equipment, not just what buttons to press, but why and what's really happening, and how to get the folder to do some more advanced things that maybe they're not.. they don't really understand.

[Bryan]

That's a very good piece of advice. Respect those that are a little older than you, show them some respect.

[JD]

Yeah. You notice I was saying that now that I'm one of the older people. 

When I was younger, I never said “yeah I’ll try [that way].” 

I just said “I can do better than them” and then tried to prove it and failed or didn’t [do it].

[Bryan]

That's how you got your own knowledge. 

[JD]

Let's hope so yeah. And it's how I justified being a jerk all those years ago to old people.

[Bryan]

Well, I appreciate you coming here and sharing some of your knowledge with me. 

One last question. What's one Horizon related thing that you're looking forward to?

[JD]

I'm really looking forward to seeing the changes they make, when they revamped the old version of the AFC-566 and turned it into the AFV-566FKT they really.. 
The job they did is incredible, you know, bringing in that level of automation and really showing that they've been listening to the customer and realizing that the industry is changing to where they really need.. the automation needs to be more and more intuitive.

I'm looking forward to them doing that now with the AFC-746. I like the folder. It's a good folder, but boy, if they make this level of changes to that machine, it should beat everything else. 

[Bryan]

Arigato gozaimashita . Thank you for joining us in this episode of Hot Minute with Horizon. If you have any questions or topic requests, please send us an email and we'll see if we can introduce it in a future episode. Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and finish first with Horizon.