Wire Binding a Hit

“The wire binding for us has really taken off in the past couple years,” reports the in-plant manager at a Midwestern energy company.* But with only tabletop punches and wire closers available, the in-plant was struggling to keep up with the work.

“We’d bring in temp help” to assist the full-time operators, he says. But even so, wire binding jobs were taking long hours to complete. Clearly, something needed to be done.

While at PRINT 13, the manager saw a demo of the Sterling Digipunch and Rilecart WB-450 double loop wire binder at the Spiel Associates booth and was impressed. So last spring the 11-employee in-plant installed both pieces of equipment and began punching and binding training manuals, calendars, trade show brochures and more. Average runs are between 1,000 and 2,000, though some jobs have included as many as 6,000 pieces.

Since getting the equipment, turnaround times have been greatly reduced. With the tabletop equipment, a job might take two weeks to punch and bind with one full-time employee and two or three temp workers, the manager says.

“We can now do that with one full-time employee and maybe one temp in a couple days,” he says. “It’s a drastic improvement.”

This allows the in-plant to take in additional binding work that it couldn’t handle in the past.

One of the big selling points of the equipment, the manager says, was the ease of use for operators.

“Within a couple of days I could have anybody walk off the street and train them,” he remarks. Though he hasn’t tried this, he has had all of his operators trained on the equipment so that whoever is available can step up and do the work.

He likes the fact that dies can be changed in seconds, and the computer on the Digi-punch tracks the maintenance cycle of each die to let him know when to lubricate or sharpen them. The Digipunch features a variable pile lift, which allows for slowing the machine down for difficult jobs. A touch screen offers automatic setup and automatic changeovers.

The WB-450 automatically cuts wire to the proper length and delivers it to the inserting station. The operator hangs the book, steps on a foot pedal, and the book is moved automatically to the closing station where the wire is crimped.

The in-plant also recently added a new Duplo DC-646 slitter/cutter/creaser.

“The main reason we bought that was for our company business cards,” the manager says, noting that registration was not holding up on the old slitter. “The Duplo 646 has allowed us to control that a lot better.”

It’s also useful for scoring digital jobs, he adds, to prevent cracking.

*After agreeing to this story, the company backed out at the last minute, so we have removed its name.