FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a sheet-fed printing press, more particularly, having a plurality of stations arranged in a row and including at least one feeder, at least one digital printing unit and at least one delivery, a common sheet transport path, over which all sheets pass, extending between the at least one printing unit and the at least one delivery, and a postprocessing unit for the printing press, having a plurality of postprocessing stations arranged in a row.
Digital printing units are understood to be printing units which can be activated pixel by pixel, such as laser printing units or inkjet printing units. Digital printing presses, which may contain a number of such printing units for multicolor printing, are able to print a new printed image for each new sheet, which permits the production of complete printed products, such as brochures, magazines or books, for example, at low outlay, even in the case of just a small number of copies. For this purpose, it is expedient and necessary, respectively, to be able to perform in one pass in the press all of the operations which follow the printing operation.
Postprocessing stations for collating and further processing a block of sheets to form a brochure or the like have previously, in a logical development of conventional arrangements, been connected up rectilinearly to the normal processing line, so that the sheet transport direction, essentially during the entire processing operation, runs along a line which is more or less straight but is in any case disposed in a vertical plane. A printing press that is furnished or outfitted in this manner with a postprocessing unit for brochure printing cannot readily be converted for straightforward printing and vice versa, but rather, respective complex changeover and adjustment operations are necessary. In addition, the design of the printing press and that of the postprocessing unit depend upon one another to a great extent, for which reason it is generally not possible to utilize standard components.