According to the manufacturer, the three-clamp device is the first perfect binder to have each of its three clamps equipped with its own servo motor and driven individually.

There have previously been two types of drive for perfect binders, which are both based on a number of clamps on a chain being driven by a motor.

With continuous drive, the motor is always running when the perfect binder is in operation and all the clamps are in motion. A perfect binder with non-continuous drive runs and stops intermittently, and the clamps do not run the whole time.

The Vareo perfect binder combines both of these technologies, which enables products of differing thicknesses to spend longer in the pressing station without the production flow being impaired.

The device, which can be used to produce photobooks, catalogues and brochures, has a mechanical speed of 1,350cph and a makeready time of less than one minute from A4 to A5.

Speaking at Hunkeler, Muller Martini Gluing Systems product manager Ronald Gross said: “The aim of the Vareo was to bring the advantages from both continuous and non-continuous running systems into one machine.

“The servo drive system is so innovative and completely different to our former machines. A big advantage of the technology is that you can give every clamp an individual speed profile.

“This makes it more and more efficient the smaller your run lengths are, especially for book-of-one production, but it is also suitable for medium runs in offset or digital printing.”

The Vareo has a modular design and can be easily extended and adapted to meet future production requirements.

It can be turned into a complete perfect-binding line by adding a customer-specific cooling section, a three-knife trimmer or an automatic book block infeed. The optional book thickness measuring system enables one-off book production, without any production waste.

The machine can process book thicknesses of up to 60mm and can handle 60-170gsm substrates for the body paper and 80-350gsm for the cover paper.

It can be used both for hotmelt and PUR production and can be equipped with an integrated barcode recognition system to ensure that the content and cover match.

The device is available to order with immediate effect and deliveries will begin in Q3 2015.