Carbon Colour of Abingdon has brought its PUR binding in-house with an investment in the latest Fastbind combined PUR and EVA perfect binder from Ashgate Automation.
‘We relied on a finishing company twenty-five miles away for our perfect binding,’ Duncan Coates, studio manager explained. ‘This was and still is cost efficient for longer runs of say 500 upwards but we are often asked to produce one or two copies of a brochure or a mock-up book where time and cost are important. The majority of our jobs are less than fifty copies.’
The company has standardised on Xerox digital presses and large format HP digital colour printers for exhibition graphics with most of its finishing is done in-house. ‘We do a lot of wire binding of manuals but we also needed a higher quality perfect binder, particularly for books and presentation documents. We held off buying one because we didn’t have sufficient work for a large and expensive PUR machine,’ Mr Coates continued. ‘Although we can do a lot of jobs using EVA glue, we didn’t want to buy an EVA binder because PUR glue gives that added strength and peace of mind.’
The Fastbind PUR/EVA XT compact table-top binder produces both soft and hard cover binding, using a choice of standard EVA or PUR interchangeable hot melt cartridges. Built on the same chassis as the Fastbind Elite XT perfect binder, virtually any binding job up to SRA3 size or A4 landscape format and up to 45 mm thick can be accommodated by using the flexibility and superior binding strength of PUR glue or regular EVA glue.
The binder uses an electronic adjustable temperature control with single operation when switching between glue types. It has a system for roughing and self-adjusts for book thickness from 1-1000 pages. There is a new type of rail mechanism for the glue application. The applicator, which has large handles, glides smoothly over the book block with almost no resistance.
‘Even with the relatively small number of PUR jobs we currently have, it will quickly pay for itself,’ said Mr Coates. ‘However, now that we have the confidence, we plan to grow this side of our business particularly with our architectural, publishing, exhibitions and marketing clients and through the internet. We are actively presenting to our customers a promotional binding box with ten different binding samples and this is being well received.’
