I am interested in all the potential vendors who either have existing
equipment of can fabricate equipment to automatically insert things
into envelopes for mailing.

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Request for Question Clarification by bobbie7-ga on 08 Aug 2002 14:00 PDT

Hi Tomd,

Please tell me if the “things” you wish to insert in the envelopes are
paper products, letters and documents and such or are they small items
or articles. To my understanding it must be paper products but I just
want to make sure before posting my answer.

Thank you

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Request for Question Clarification by historybuff-ga on 09 Aug 2002 09:18 PDT

Hello tomd,

Your answer may be difficult to address in the "all" mode, especially
"all who could manufacture."  You may get a better response if you are
able to rephrase it as "major" or "top five" or "20" or "some large"? 
When you say vendors, do you mean manufacturer or distributor, or
both?  Geographically, are you looking for worldwide or more limited?

Thank you for any clarification.

Hello, Tomd-ga!

As others have commented, there are a great many companies around the
world manufacturing products of this type.  They range from tabletop
small-office models to extremely large floor-standing units with
enough available accessories to be truly overwhelming.

As with any other equipment purchase, you'll want to decide in advance
just how much capacity you wish to buy.  These units will range
anywhere from several hundred individual pieces of mail per hour to
several thousand.  Some are capable of folding more sheets, or heavier
sheets, than others.  Within any given category, some will offer
higher-capacity feeders than the others.  Some systems are standalone,
others are designed to work in conjunction with an office PC.  Some
are folder-inserters, while others are pure inserters which require a
separate folding machine.  You will want to take all of this into
consideration.

Given that you did not specify how many manufacturers you wanted us to
list, I followed the simple (if tedious) expedient of plugging through
several hundred search results, until I stopped seeing new brands. 
The seventeen manufacturers shown below cover a wide spectrum of
brands and features, and represent Asia, Europe, and North America. I
trust this will be satisfactory. In each case, I've linked you to the
most relevant page of the manufacturer's site.  In some instances the
links are rather long, so you may need to cut-and-paste them into your
browser's address bar if they do not work when you click them.

Pitney Bowes Inserters
http://www.pb.com/cgi-bin/pb.dll/products/pb_product_category.jsp?prodCatName=Inserters&groupOID=8119&locale=US&language=ENG

Kern Inserting Systems
http://www.kerninc.com/

Francotyp-Postalia (little information shown online, just fill out the
feedback form and they'll send you whatever information you wish about
their product line)
http://www.fpusa.net/

Secap USA (formerly Datatech)
http://www.secapusa.com/folding_inserting.html

Formax
http://www.formax.bescorp.com/fd630.htm

Inserco, manufacturers of the Mailcrafters line
http://www.inscerco.com/m_crafters.htm

Bowe Systec AG (not to be confused with Pitney Bowes)
http://www.bowesystec.com/

Duplo USA
http://www.duplousa.com/products/officepro/officepro.htm#folderinserters

PFE International
http://www.pfeinc.com/site_map.htm

Neopost USA
http://www.neopostinc.com/prd/fin000.html

Bell & Howell
http://www.bellhowell.com/mmt/products/docfinish.shtml#1

Buhrs Group
http://www.buhrs.com/ 

Ascom-Hasler
http://www.haslerinc.com/products/folderinserters/

Plockmatic systems:
http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:LTrHGb9tQwAC:www.infotec.com.tw/product/pms_documailer.htm+%22inserter+system%22+OR+%22inserting+system%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Sure-Feed Engineering
http://www.sure-feed.com/flowmaster_12000.html

MB Products
http://62.231.28.129:7777/product/fpi3030-e.shtml

CMC Equipment
http://www.cmc-equipment-uk.co.uk/main.htm

Google search

One of the necessities for any on-line search is to have the correct
keywords.  In order to learn the appropriate terminology for these
machines, I went first to the Pitney-Bowes website.  After all, any
investigation of mailing equipment must logically begin with the
market leader.  From there, having learned that the correct term was
"inserters", I performed the following search:

"inserter system" OR "inserting system"

From there, it was simply a matter of working through a few hundred
"hits" and tracking down the manufacturers home pages (when necessary)
by searching on the individual brands.

Thank you for an interesting search!

-Chromedome

Miles away I know  but still in the postal industry ( Australia)  and
using to great advantage the type of equipment you are wanting info on
so perhaps entitled to add a minor comment.

  In October I will be off again to the WORLD POSTAL EXPO where the
absolute latest of such machines will be on display in operating mode
over most of the three days of exhibition. Last year the machines I
seen that do the work you speak of were almost unbelievably fast
efficient and accurate to the point that many like myself stood
mesmersied by it all.

     

  The POST-EXPO website provides  the links you would neeed to see the
latest machines and the suppliers names I would think, although I have
not gone into it for a while. In any  case if PITNEY-BOWES or one of
the recognised  companies who deal in such equipmemt they are usually
happy to provide disk, video or emailed film on the operations of
their machines. I took home some great videos from last year's EXPO.

  Seeya mate'

    John From Melbourne