Kolbus Perfect Binding Line - Electrical Installation
A print finisher was installing a Kolbus perfect-binding line. This included a gatherer, binder, spine gluing / pre-melter, three-knife trimmer and extraction blower all run together as one machine. They asked us to get factory power to each unit to get it up and running.
Before pulling cable, we spent time on the floor with the nameplates and the existing distribution: how much each machine needed, what was already in the plant, and which sub-board could feed the new line without loading the upstream supply beyond its comfort zone.
The Kolbus line in place — plant power into the machine cabinets via cable tray from the ceiling.
Loads and reuse
The line looked like this on paper:
Three-knife trimmer — 86A three-phase + N (KolbusHD 153.M)
Spine gluing / premelter — about 38–45A three-phase + N (Nordson adhesive melter on the Kolbus premelter)
Perfect binder — 62A three-phase + N
Gathering machine — 36A three-phase + N
Blower — 25A three-phase (Becker CS ZU805/01, 11 kW)
Two existing circuits still earned their keep:
16mm² already ran to the blower position on a 63A breaker - fine for the Becker once we fitted an isolator
25mm² near the gatherer on a 63A breaker - we lengthened it to the perfect binder so we didn’t have to run a full new feeder for that unit
Upstream, the back-wall boards were on 95mm² from 200A Heinemann magnetic breakers (cable capacity around 295A), so there was room to add the Kolbus loads without a bigger main feed.
Back-wall distribution — 200 A Heinemann breakers feeding the plant boards that would supply the new line.
Sub-board and new feeders
Most of the work sat on sub-board. We cleared an obsolete Optimill circuit, then moved a three-phase outlet and a single-phase middle-machine circuit across so the existing breaker could be dedicated to the new line.
From there we ran new orange 4C+E circular:
35mm², about 40m, on a Hager C100 (100 A) breaker — three-knife trimmer
16mm², about 25m and 38 m, each on 50A breakers — gatherer and gluer
25mm² extension of about 15m — perfect binder
Running 4C+E orange circular between the distribution wall and the machine line.
Energising the line
Once the terminations and the binder joint were finished, we tested the circuits and brought power up section by section. Everything came up cleanly, and the axes we checked ran in the right direction. The customer’s team took over for functional proving on the bindery process. Extraction fan wiring was left as a short follow-on.
The Kolbus cabinets already had tidy OEM control gear inside — Siemens motor protection, Phoenix Contact QUINT supplies, and the usual terminal fields. Our job was plant power into those cabinets: the right cable size, protection and isolation, not a rebuild of what Kolbus had shipped.
OEM control cabinet on the line — Siemens protectors and trunked field wiring as delivered with the machine.
Jobs like this are satisfying when the planning sticks: match each Kolbus / Nordson / Becker nameplate to a feeder, keep plant cable only where the breaker and cable sizing still fit, and prove isolation and rotation before production proving starts