Quick start
ImposeIQ Book is the ImposeIQ Imposition application restricted to book work. It keeps the same window, the same source-PDF loader and live sheet preview, the same signature nesting, creep, duplex handling, Duplo DC marks, cutter XML, HC cut export, templates and PDF output. Only the sheet layout choice is narrowed, to the two book layouts.
- Drop the body PDF on Source PDF.
- Choose the binding style: saddle stitch or perfect bound.
- Set the piece trim size, the press sheet and the bleed as usual.
- For a perfect-bound book, set the body and cover stock in the Perfect-Bound Cover section and read the spine width and crease positions.
- Generate the imposed PDF, then export the body cutter XML and the cover DC job.
Binding styles
Saddle-stitch sheets nest inside one another: the outermost sheet carries the first and last pages, the innermost carries the middle spread, and the whole book is normally one signature. Because they nest, creep runs across the entire book.
A perfect-bound book does not nest. It is a stack of separate signatures, each folded on its own and milled off at the spine, so pages run straight through — signature 1 holds pages 1 to 16, signature 2 holds 17 to 32. Creep therefore runs from the outside to the inside of one signature and restarts on the next. Applying whole-book creep to a perfect-bound job walks the inner pages of every later signature progressively off position.
Page counts pad to a multiple of four, and a perfect-bound book pads again to fill whole signatures. Padded pages are reported as blanks rather than silently added.
Spine width
Spine width is the body page count divided by the PPI — pages, not sheets. PPI is pages per inch, the way a mill sells book paper; a caliper is what a micrometer reads on one sheet. They describe the same fact, because one sheet is two pages: PPI equals 2 divided by the caliper.
The value is taken from the best source available, in order: a measured caliper, then a typed PPI, then the grade table (groundwood, uncoated offset, coated matte, coated gloss, by basis weight), then a gsm rule of thumb. Whichever was used is named on screen beside the result.
The grade table holds typical values for estimating. Bulk varies by mill, by grade within a family and by run — for a job where the spine has to be right, measure a bound dummy or use the mill's spec sheet. The application says on screen whenever the table is what produced the answer.
An optional glue allowance is added to the paper thickness rather than replacing it, so a shop that has measured its own glue line can record it without distorting the PPI.
Cover creasing
A perfect-bound cover is one flat sheet that becomes three panels — back cover, spine, front cover. Fold only places one crease at each edge of the spine. Fold plus strain relief adds a second crease on each cover panel, a short distance outboard of its spine crease; that pair is the hinge, and it takes the flexing when the book is opened so the fold does not crack along the glue line.
The strain-relief offset defaults to 6 mm and is editable per job, since a heavier cover wants a wider hinge. An offset wider than the cover panel is refused rather than clipped.
Cover stock is entered as a grade and weight or as a measured caliper. Point stock is exact — 12 pt is 0.012 in — while pound cover weights are typical values and are labeled as such.
Crease direction and machine passes
Spine creases fold down and strain-relief creases fold up. They oppose each other, which is what makes the hinge work, and a DC creasing wheel drives the stock one way only.
A fold-only cover runs once on any machine, because every crease folds the same way. A cover with strain relief runs once on a DC-648 or DC-746 fitted with the up-crease module, which carries the opposing tool. Without that module the cover runs twice: the spine creases first with the sheet as printed, then the sheet is flipped left to right and run again, which makes the relief creases as down creases on the reversed sheet.
Flipping the sheet reverses which edge leads, so every second-pass position is mirrored across the sheet. ImposeIQ Book performs that mirroring and shows the mirrored positions. Working them out by hand and forgetting the mirror is the usual reason a two-pass cover returns with the relief creases on the wrong side of the spine.
A shop that owns the module can still choose to run the cover twice, and the two passes are planned properly rather than assumed. A DC crease is one full-width pass of the wheel with no X extent, so the cover must be fed with the spine square to the feed direction.
Feeder and collator marks
The DSF-2200 and DSF-6000 booklet-maker feeders separate sets two alternative ways: the barcode kit prints a number on every sheet, or the plain optical sensor watches for a solid end mark on the last sheet of the set. A shop has one or the other. The end mark must fall inside the sensor's window — 15 to 20 mm long and 2 to 5 mm thick — and marks outside it are reported rather than trusted.
The DSC-10/60 Intelligent Collator reads a different barcode through its BARCODE KIT FOR LUL / LUR, built from ordered fields — Set ID, Sheet ID, number of sheets and Job ID — in whatever order the PC Controller's LUL/LUR tab uses. The collator has no optical end-mark sensor, and asking for one is reported instead of silently ignored.
Barcode values are assembled the way the controller assembles them, so a printed sheet and a keyed-in job agree without retyping. The end mark is placed on the last sheet of every set, including a short final set.
Exports
Generate Imposed PDF writes the imposed book itself, every sheet front and back with its marks, and can embed the DC job XML inside the PDF. Export DC Job XML writes the cutting program for the body sheets. Export Cover DC Job writes the cover creases as their own job; a two-pass cover writes two files, named for the pass and marked as flipped, because they are two separate runs of the machine and a single job holding all four creases would describe something the machine cannot do without the up-crease module. The HC series export writes the DocuCutter import CSV for an HC-550 or HC-680, and layouts save as templates exactly as they do in the Imposition application.
Only the DC-648 carries the registration hardware for skew and shrinkage marks, so those are unavailable on the other models rather than printed and never read. The device follows the machines enabled in Settings, so the body job and the cover job always agree about which machine they are for.
Troubleshooting
- The cover misses the spine: check which source produced the spine width, and measure a bound dummy before a long run.
- A two-pass cover has the relief creases on the wrong side: confirm the sheet was flipped left to right between passes and that pass 2's own file was used.
- The feeder stops separating sets: check the end mark against the 15–20 mm by 2–5 mm window, or confirm the barcode kit is what the machine actually has.
- The book reads out of order: confirm the binding style — perfect-bound signatures do not nest the way a saddle book does.
- Skew or shrinkage marks are unavailable: only the DC-648 can read them.
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