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Choosing a Binder
There are many ways of binding a document, but very few that will make it look really good and professional. Many documents are bound using plastic covers with various forms of slide that hold the pages together at the spine and many others with ring-binders. Both these methods are cheap and convenient – and it shows! There are variations on these themes, but none of them look good, nor are they particularly easy to hold, manoeuvre or read. Ring binders are good for students’ notes, recipes, etc, but not very effective for any kind of permanent reference document, such as a thesis, business proposal, photo album or scrap book.
Comb Binders
This is by far the most popular form of binding, widely used because of its flexibility and low cost. The binding machine punches the sheets of paper then a set of grippers opens the comb. The punched sheets are placed on the comb then the grippers close the comb, securely binding the document. Combs can hold up to 500 sheets of paper, depending on the paper thickness.
Pros: Finished documents lie flat when open; pages can easily be added and removed; there is a huge range of combs available in different sizes and colours, so the system is very flexible; the cost of combs is relatively low.
Cons: Smaller documents can be difficult to bind and the documents difficult to open; larger documents can fall apart when dropped because of the non-permanent bind.
Thermal Binders
Thermal binding, as the name suggests, uses heat to melt a strip of glue in the spine of the special Thermal Binding Covers. The pages to be bound are placed inside the cover, which is then placed in the binder. The binding process normally takes between 30 and 60 seconds. The machine has a heating element which melts the glue, permanently binding the pages inside the cover. Thermal binding covers are available in sizes from 1mm to 300mm, allowing you to bind from 10 to 300 pages of 80gsm paper. It is highly inadvisable to bind more than 150 pages in a document, as the weight of paper will quickly pull them away from the cover. The Peach Thermal Binder has a 300mm opening, which is designed to allow simultaneous binding of multiple documents; for example, you could bind three 3mm documents at the same time.
Pros: Speed and convenience: a proficient operator could bind 50 or more documents per hour. Thermal binding machines are inexpensive.
Cons: Pages cannot be replaced once bound; covers can be relatively expensive; documents cannot be laid flat or folded back on themselves.
Wire Binders
Wire binding is probably the most professional-looking of all three methods and allows a document to be fully opened and even turned back on itself, something which combs cannot do. It is very durable and can bind up to 120 pages using 3:1”, 34-loop wires. (There are wire binders designed for larger documents, which use 2:1”, 23-loop wires that can bind up to 300 pages. These are very expensive and the wires can also be expensive - and hard to find.)
Pros: Professional appearance; wires are inexpensive.
Cons: Pages cannot be replaced once bound.
Please click HERE to see how you can use the Peach Wire Binder to produce high quality presentations and proposals.
Please note that combs and wires are not compatible: the size and shape of the holes are different, and also the number of holes per page.
Summary
As a very rough guide to choosing a binder, please consider the following:
- For large documents up to 450 pages, choose a Comb Binder.
- To produce large quantities of documents up to 150 pages, where speed of binding is important, choose a
Thermal Binder.
- Where appearance and professionalism is most important and the document has a small number of pages, choose a
Wire Binder.
For advice on
choosing the best binder for your needs, please email.
www.binding-solutions.co.uk
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