Paste Binding

jwheeler

Well-known member
We are an in-plant for a county sheriff and we produce materials not only for the sheriff staff, but also the materials given to the inmates at multiple jails (such as rule books, program pamphlets, educational materials, etc). One of the limitations for anything given to an inmate is that it cannot have staples. Therefore, we cannot do saddle stitching. We resort to either perfect binding or padding if it's too few sheets for our perfect binder. The padding requires hours of hand slicing to separate the pads. Today, one of our chaplains brought us what appeared to be a saddle stitched booklet from a religious ministry, however, the signatures were held together with small spots of glue at the spine instead of staples.

I did some research and found this is an older method called "Paste Binding". However, when I tried to research equipment that could do this, I'm not finding much...all of the results are perfect binding machines. Do any of you have equipment that does this? What is the footprint like and average investment? Is this an easy method or a hassle? Any advice would be appreciated, or even other binding types suggestions.
 
I used one of these a few years ago and it looks like it's been modernized since I used one. The Powis Parker Fastback uses a glue spine, and may be just the thing you're looking for. As I recall, it was not expensive.

 
I used one of these a few years ago and it looks like it's been modernized since I used one. The Powis Parker Fastback uses a glue spine, and may be just the thing you're looking for. As I recall, it was not expensive.

Thank you for this suggestion. We had one of these before. However, it’s only good for short run since you have to manually place each book in and wait for it to heat.

However, we do runs in the thousands, so we need something more automated.
 
We do this inline on a web press, which is much more than you need. You might be able to do inline gluing on a folder as described in this link.
 
I run the Print Shop for the County here, our detention center has a problem with updates on the rule book, constantly changes. They do one full copy (using the FastBack20) for each unit, so about 10. At booking they hand out a condensed version hitting the important stuff that is an 8 1/2 x 11 landscape 2 page document that is folded in half, no staples, if they lose it they just hand them another. Really helps keep the costs down. Our Juvenile Center is the opposite, we do the thermal book, 100 at a time, but they have rules and if the book is damaged or defaced, they loose privileges, and surprisingly they do not waste many, only update them once a year. Prior to getting the FastBack, we would print the full copy and punch a whole in the upper left corner and they would put a D-Ring in it.
 

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