How to choose the right binding machine for your office?

You have completed your presentation, report or proposal. All those pages in the presentation, the employee manual, the book, the instructional guide, the schematics… They’ve all got to have be put together to present a customers’ budget, the readers needs and a style that looks good. What is the best binding machine for you to buy? 

Well, the answer to this one will depend on what you are trying to accomplish. You may even want more than one machine. There are several choices to use, but the choice needs to be determined by a couple of factors:

Are you using it primarily for marketing?

Are they being used for internal documents?

Are you presenting material for clients?

How much binding will you be doing?

This will help you determine which binding machine you will need to use.

Comb Binding Machines – cheap, effective. Plus, combs can be opened to add/subtract sheets. Comb is great for internal documents like employee handbooks.

Coil Binding Machines or Wire Binding Machines – Comes in a variety of colors and materials. Allows the reader to lay the book open flat and turn pages a full 360-degrees. Coil is great for your marketing materials or customer presentation.

Perfect Thermal Binding Machines – Most paperback books at your local retailer are bound with this method. It’s glue-based and leaves a nice sturdy spine. These can be used for multiple uses, but marketing and proposal presentations are good uses. If you are a church or school, you can even use it for creating custom picture books to highlight a project or activity at your school.

MasterBind Binding Machine System – Provides a very flexible approach to creating creative and custom documents. They have a custom pouch lamination cover which allows you to create custom covers on the fly. Great for custom presentations to prospects or customers. They also have more traditional and high end leather covers too.

Once you’ve chosen a couple binding methods that you’d like to offer at your shop, consider flexibility, speed and cost.

You’ll certainly find flexibility with a combo system. A single purchase will allow you to do both comb, wire or coil (depending on the machine).You can also keep size in mind. Don’t limit yourself with your comb or coil systems to a standard 8 1/2″ x 11″. There are machines that can accommodate 14″ or 17″ sheets. Speed is determined by using either a manual or automatic operation and the number of sheets that can be punched at one time.

The question of cost is determined by type, speed and volume of sheets that can be punched. Large commercial systems can handle hundreds of punches at a time. If your office is producing 4 or 5 proposals a week, you can get away with using a manual binding machine.