A4-laserprinters have caused a world wide boom of A4-LASERPAPER starting around 1980. Thereupon a lot of special machinery is installed for in-line production of A4 in reams, wrapped in paper or film. The capacity of these lines is impressive. The more lines installed, the stronger the price battle amongst the papermills and the larger merchants.
 

1. 500 sheets is too big a pack. The production lines for A4 reams were not designed with packs of 100 or 250 sheets in mind. In view of the overcapacity in A4 reams the market for smaller packs is now discovered for the next layer of A4-consumers. For many people in developped markets and emerging markets a whole ream is a waste. They often only need a few sheets and do not want to spill precious paper. It is a problem, that the existing high volume machinery is not designed for small packs. What is needed is a small, slim processor to efficiently produce A4 in packs of 100 or 250. There is a hudge demand for such packs, not only of 80 or 90 gr white, but equally for heavier- as well as for coloured stock, and for all kinds of more special paper qualities. To produce such smaller packs requires quite different technique - sheeters, stackers, wrappers -, in other words slim processors as now offered by Automation Amsterdam NV.
 

2. The change to GRAIN-SHORT is emerging. Grain long is no more the must.  The heavy duty A4-laserpaper machinery is designed in the time were A4-page printers came up. The page printers in the early times were largely competing on speed. Figures like 80 sheets per minute were often heard. Such printers found a place in the centralized document centres. For various reasons the A4 documents became more and more printed in local offices of large organizations leaving roll-processing to the EDP-centres. The output printers became more and more desk top printers appearing by the thousands in offices, often as a personal printer. High speed, high volume laser sheet printers became less interesting. Low cost laser printers of 20 or 30 sheets per minute were adequate and fairly troublefree. An important reason for this trend is the PAPER, causing more jams at higher
speeds. There just is a speed limit for A4-paper with A4-friction feeders. A jam in a laser printer is very disturbing. To reprint or repair jammed paper, in the printer is a nuisance. Much down-time is avoided with saver and slower printers and by using the correct grain direction for the desktop printers.
 

3. GRAIN SHORT A4 for TROUBLE FREE LASERPRINTER OUTPUT. The small, narrow laser printers were taking over more and more. They operate much better with grain short paper. The short side of the A4-sheet is the straightest edge and the savest side for the friction feeder. With all the large A4-processors in many countries the A4-suppliers were caught on the wrong foot, when the desk top printers showed up. The A4-paper offered by office shops, merchants, catalogue and the web are grain long, the wrong grain direction for meanwhile millions of destop laser printers.
 

There will come the day were the users of laser printers will insist on the correct grain. Analists will not fail to pinpoint the expense of the jams stemming from the wrong grain paper sheets. The economists will detect that the lower cost of grain long A4 paper does in no way compensate for the lot of lost time by paper jams.
 

Automation is available for short grain A4 machinery, multi web, flying splicers and variable cut-off for 210 mm, 8 1/2", 11" and 297 mm, followed by a high speed stacker and with handshake to the wrapper. This versatile solution is the guarantee for troublefree laser sheet production of any grain direction and any practical sheet length.