What's Your Best Bet In The Bindery?

Perfect binding, saddle stitching and mechanical binding each have their places. Find out which ones are best for your in-plant.

By Vincent De Franco

As in-plants bring increasingly more work in-house, they're finding themselves in direct competition with commercial printers. Therefore it's crucial they have up-to-date equipment that enables them to compete. This is especially true of bindery equipment, since the binding and stitching on a booklet is often the first thing a customer notices.

When shopping for bindery equipment there are three major categories from which to choose: perfect binding, saddle stitching and mechanical binding (double loop, etc.). The most common bindery process for in-plants has always been saddle stitching, the simplest and least expensive of the processes. After signatures of printed pieces are collated, a saddle stitching machine mechanically forces stitches through the booklet to produce a bound piece. A true saddle stitch resembles a staple, but is actually a sewn, cut piece of wire that comes off a roll. Many magazines are saddle stitched due to the speeds (up to 20,000 binds per hour) and low per-unit costs.

Lower capacity "stitching" machines, often referred to as bookletmakers, use cartridges of pre-formed staples. These machines produce at much slower speeds (500 to 800 per hour). Although they are technically not "stitchers," in this article we will group them in the saddle stitching category due to the almost identical appearance of the final product.

Because of their high speeds and low per-unit costs, saddle stitchers have always been a logical choice for in-plants producing internal communication documents, where speed and cost are issues, according to Bill Francis, director of Trade Sales for James Burn International (JBI).

"Saddle stitching is affordable and plentiful, and most in-plants have in-line capability to produce saddle stitched documents quickly and inexpensively," he explains. "The downside comes in when producing a presentation item using high-end color, because the staples just don't add the "pop" that the piece needs to get noticed."

This "pop" Francis refers to is more apparent in printed products finished with mechanical bound machines, which JBI also makes.

The Mechanical Method

Mechanical binding refers to the process of finishing a booklet or printed piece by punching holes in the binding edge and inserting wire or plastic spirals or loops to hold it together. There are very different types of mechanical binding (Wire-O, plastic coil, double loop, etc.) each with their own set of benefits and drawbacks, but we will treat them generically for this article.

David Spiel, co-owner of Spiel Associates, which supplies a variety of bindery equipment, explains that the prime benefit of mechanical binding is the finished book's ability to stay open flat. Spiel uses products like cookbooks and maintenance manuals as examples of books where this is important.

"You don't want to prop open a book when you are under a car or stirring a stew," he points out.

In addition to this lay-flat functionality, the coil and loops used in this process are available in a variety of colors, lending a more pleasing appearance for the presentation documents commonly produced by in-plants. Machines range from easily storable tabletop machines, producing a few dozen per hour, to larger, more automated systems that can turn out a thousand or more per hour.

The drawbacks of this process are the slower speeds and higher costs per unit compared to the other popular methods of binding.

"You will never see a Tom Clancy book Wire-o bound," continues Spiel, "because the process is not meant for mass production. But if you're making a presentation to the CEO, lie-flat, mechanically bound presentations are great."

A Perfect Solution

The third major category is perfect binding, where the sheets that comprise the book are held together by glue. After the machine grinds off a small portion of the binding edge of the signatures, they are imbedded into an adhesive and covers are added inline. The end result is a cleanly finished piece with a spine that can be viewed when the book is placed upright on a shelf.

Perfect binding (also known as adhesive binding) is a higher-end binding technique, also available in many in-plants at a reasonable price and turnaround. (In-line tape binding is a version of perfect binding.) It provides a more professional look than saddle stitching, but it is typically not as reader friendly as mechanical binding, and often (as is the case with paper back novels) the spine cracks when the reader tries to get the book to stay open. And because it involves adhesives, the handling of glue can make the production messy and the give the plant environment an unpleasant odor.

Perfect binding allows more pages to be included in a finished document than saddle stitching. "Once you're beyond 80 to 100 pages, that's where perfect binding comes into play," explains Doug Reny, vice president and director of marketing at Standard Business Systems. "It's the most professional look before you get to hard cover."

When a saddle-stitched booklet or magazine gets too thick, pages can come loose and the product begins to fall apart, while perfect bound books can be hundreds of pages thick.

Durability is another major benefit of perfect binding. "The customer needs to look at the end use and the desired life of the product," explains Kerry Burroughs, division manager of book binding at Muller Martini, one of the world's largest producers of bindery equipment. "If it's a magazine and the life is one month, then saddle stitching is fine, but if it's a textbook and needs to last five years, then adhesive binding is necessary."

Darcy Maeda, public relations coordinator at Duplo USA, suggests that in-plants consider the stocks they run when choosing a type of bindery equipment.

"Perfect binder glue is less effective with coated stocks, so if the in-plant uses more coated than non-coated they are better off using a bookletmaker," she says.

Conversely, she adds, saddle-stitching machines tend to have a larger footprint than perfect binders, so space-strapped in-plants should also consider that.

Digital Printing Pushes Changes

No other factor has had more of an impact on the bindery than the rapid introduction of digital presses, which have pushed down run lengths and increased the importance of shorter makeready times.

"The 50,000 to 100,000 book runs that were once the hallmark of the bindery market are now fewer and farther between," notes JBI's Francis.

As a result his company has seen a surge in in-plants using newer, faster equipment to cost effectively produce mechanically bound, short-run documents in-house. JBI, as well as the other suppliers interviewed for this article, have responded to the growing on-demand pressures placed on small commercial print and in-plant printers by developing smaller, more operator-friendly equipment that requires less training and provides faster makereadies and throughput times for shorter runs.

Jerry DeRome director of DemandWorks Products at Böwe Bell + Howell, sees a growing overall need for saddle stitching of very short run or personalized documents coming from the insurance, financial and health care industries, where security of information is important.

According to DeRome, information from these industries, which may have been delivered in the past in loose pages, now requires secure binding for security reasons. This is placing pressure on equipment manufactures to ensure that their collating equipment performs with zero-defects, since there are tremendous legal ramifications if incorrect health or financial information is delivered.

"Make sure you understand your application and the equipment you are buying before jumping," Francis concludes. "All binding methods may not be right for all applications so consult with local dealers and/or manufacturers with specific applications before spending money on a system that may not be right for your needs."