If you want to add a perfect bound, completely professional look to your business documents, you may want to consider thermal binding. This type of bookbinding uses no hole punches or inserted spines, wires, or combs. By carefully choosing a cover, you can create documents so professional they actually look like they were produced commercially. In addition to its professional look, it is also quick and simple to use.
When it comes to speed and ease of use, thermal binding is at the front of the pack. To use thermal binding, you insert your pages into the pre-made cover. Next, you place the cover and document into the thermal binding machine and wait for the document to cool.
Choosing just the right cover will help your documents send the perfect message to your potential clients and employees. A very popular type of thermal binding cover is a linen-look back cover with a clear cover for the front, also called a utility cover. This type of cover is attractive looking and bargain priced. For those requiring a more sophisticated look for company publications, imprinted covers, window covers, and special stock covers are popular choices. Some organizations opt for top of the line professionally printed custom covers to create a truly unique look.
Since you must use a pre-made cover for thermal bound documents, you should be careful to choose an appropriately sized cover for your presentation or report. It's even more critical to do so if you use a custom cover since special orders can take several weeks to arrive. Fortunately, covers for this type of binding are available in sizes from 1/16" to 2" in thickness.
To ensure the strongest possible binding for your thermal bound document, you should ensure the pages are perfectly aligned so they will each come into contact with the glue. You can also tap the document (spine side down) on the table to further ensure each page is touching the glue.
For low-volume presentations or reports, you can create your own thermal binding covers by printing the cover as a single sheet and creating a spine using a scoring tool. Next, add a strip of thermal binding glue and bind as usual. Be patient. This technique may take a little practice to master. Plan on a few trial runs, and you'll soon be a pro.
If you would like the look of a hard cover for your thermal bound documents, hard covers are available. These lend a sense of permanence and professionalism to your documents. If you want to use hard covers, you will need to use a binding machine with adjustable temperature controls. Hard covers are adhered using a higher temperature than other covers. In addition to a higher temperature, a special hard cover crimping tool is also essential to properly finish the hard covers. If your machine does not allow you to adjust the temperature, you can use your machine to bind hard covers by running hard bound documents though a few times to make the glue properly adheres to the pages.
Thermal binding is an easy and professional document binding solution. Thermal binding allows for easy customization regardless of the number of copies needed.
Overview:
Sometimes just one binding style isn't enough. Organizations may want one look for internal documents and another for client presentations. Or perhaps two different departments are looking for different looks for their bound materials.
The Akiles DuoMac line of binding machines allows you to combine two different binding styles quickly and easily into one machine.
This machine offers options for binding documents with plastic combs and 5:1 pitch spiral coil.
Features / Strengths:
This is the only plastic comb / 5:1 pitch spiral coil combination machine available on the market. It includes a punch for the plastic comb pattern. A punch for the 5:1 pitch spiral coil pattern and a comb opener to open combs for inserting pages. It also includes a wire closer (this machine is built on the same template as the Duomac wire binding machines). This means that you can also use it for binding documents with 19 loop spiral-O wire.
Using this machine you can get three completely different looks for your documents. This is impressive since most machines only offer one binding style.
Plastic comb binding is one of the cheapest and easiest to use binding methods available on the market. This machine can handle combs from 3/16" up to 2" in diameter.
This machine can also handle 5:1 pitch spiral coil binding (5 holes per inch). This is a special variety of spiral coil that is more tightly wound than standard 4:1 pitch coil. Some users prefer this style for its tightly wound professional look.
This machine also includes the same great features as are found in other Akiles binding machines such as depth of punch margin controls, continuous punching guides and multiple handle operation.
Weaknesses / Limitations:
There was only so many things that Akiles could add to one machine and although this machine has almost everything else it is noticeably missing an electric spiral coil inserter. For users that do very much spiral coil binding the addition of a stand alone inserter such as the Roll-A-Coil would be highly suggested.
With so many things added to one machine, it sort of takes on the appearance of an octopus. This machine actually has four arms (not 8) but you get the idea. It has a fairly large footprint and it can be a little bit confusing to operate.
The supplies for spiral-o wire binding and 5:1 pitch coil binding are not nearly as common as some other binding systems. This can sometimes result in increased lead times especially for non standard colors or odd sizes.
Construction:
The Akiles Duomac C51 is extremely well built. It is made almost entirely of metal and is designed to stand up in a professional environment. In fact these machines are often chosen by print shops, binderies, copy centers and corporate offices.
The Duomac C51 includes a free pair of coil crimpers for finishing your 5:1 pitch coil bound documents.
As mentioned above it is not the prettiest combination but it has features not found in any other binding machine on the market.
Recommendation:
For users who are looking for a high quality 5:1 pitch coil binding machine or a comb binding machine this is a great option. It includes all of the features that you need to bind with Combs, Coil and Wire at a great price point.
If you plan on using this machine a lot for coil binding you are going to want to get a stand alone coil inserter.
This is a great choice if you want options. However, unless you are looking specifically for the 5:1 pitch coil you might want to consider the Duomac C41 which offers the same features with a 4:1 pitch coil punch instead of the 5:1.
Both Jeff Mcritchie & Jeff McRitchie are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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