Talk to me about comb/wire spine closers please

[bcr]

Hi folks,

Should be starting up our CRD soon and one thing we will need will be some spine closing units for various binding methods, to include comb, wire (2:1, 3:1) and possibly some others.

Papers will either be coming out of GBC in-line punch units or a standalone automated punch unit.

At present we only have a manual GBC comb spine closer which is a hateful piece of kit. Any suggestions for higher volume devices? Bonus points if they are not fiddly to operate.

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

GBC comb is dead.

Spiral/coil and twin loop seem to the be go-to. More automation exists with those two systems.

 

[bcr]

GBC comb is dead.

Spiral/coil and twin loop seem to the be go-to. More automation exists with those two systems.

Thanks! Are there any wire methods that can do 400+ sheets per binder though? Upside of comb binding is that really wide spines are available. In our industry (legal) we often have really thick binders! And the rubberised spiral binds have a tendency to break or get tangled up if moving large volumes of them around a lot

 

[PricelineNegotiator]

Thanks! Are there any wire methods that can do 400+ sheets per binder though? Upside of comb binding is that really wide spines are available. In our industry (legal) we often have really thick binders! And the rubberised spiral binds have a tendency to break or get tangled up if moving large volumes of them around a lot

That's a good point. We keep 50mm spirals on hand, which can bind around 430 pages 350 pages. With that being said, I think most automatic equipment for binding spirals that I've looked at has 30mm as the largest spiral it can auto-bind. Spiral is more durable than comb, but comb allows the end user to add or remove pages easily. Within 5 years we switched from 80% comb/20% spiral to 95% spiral/5% comb in terms of volume. This was not our doing, but more so a natural demand by our clients. When I was in Dallas for PrintingUnited and Chicago for Print19, each of the binding supply manufacturers indicated that comb was dead.

Check out spiralbinding.com, we get our supplies from them.

 

[bcr]

Makes sense, thanks for your input. Some of our clients have been saying they prefer wire bind as comb is unsightly.

I'll make some enquiries with local finishing companies for appropriate gear.

 

[davidspiel]

Unfortunately there are no automated comb systems. Wire and Coil Binding are the way to go. You can automatically bind books up to 1" thick on our automatic wire binders: Double Loop Wire Binding Machines - SPIEL
and up to 1 3/4" thick on our coil binders.: Plastic Coil Binding Machines and Formers - SPIEL

Truly yours,

David Spiel