Do-It-Yourself Binding

There are four main kinds of binding system commonly available. Each has its own advantages and drawbacks.

Thermal Binding

Thermal binding involves special covers, available in a variety of colours and textures, with a strip of glue in the fold. Papers to be bound are placed inside a cover which is then dropped into a thermal binding machine for around 30-60 seconds. The machine has a heating element which melts the glue, causing the pages to be permanently affixed inside the cover.

Pros: It's fast -- a quick operator would be able to bind 50 or more documents per hour using a thermal binding machine. Thermal binding machines are inexpensive, although the covers can get start to get pricy if you use a lot of them.

Cons: Pages cannot be replaced; once bound, they're bound for good. The covers can be expensive.

Comb Binding

This is the most familiar form of binding and is widely used because of its flexibility and low cost. A machine with sets of grippers opens the comb onto which punched sheets are placed. When the comb is closed the pages are securely held. Combs are available which can hold up to 1,000 sheets of paper (depending on the paper thickness).

Pros: Finished documents lie flat when open, making it ideal for directories and so on. There is huge range of combs available in different sizes and colours, so the system is very flexible.

Cons: Binding machines can be expensive initially but the low cost of combs means that high-volume users will soon see overall savings.

Wire Binding

Wire binding looks very professional and allows a document to be fully opened and even turned inside out on itself; something which combs cannot do. It is very durable and most systems can bind up to 100 pages, more if lighter weight paper is used.

Pros: Professional appearance; wires are inexpensive.

Cons: Wire binding machines are expensive, although like the comb binding described above, offices which use a lot of wires will make savings in the long run.

Professional Binding

If your document is being printed professionally you will most likely have it finished professionally too. Finishing covers a multitude of operations and the most common bindery operations are described here.

Padding: Forming stacks of loose sheets into pads.

Stitching: at its simplest, this is very similar to stapling: one or more small pieces of metal wire is punched through the booklet and folded to resemble a staple.

Loop stitching: like stitching, but where the stitch loops out from the spine so that the document can be inserted into a ring binder.

Perfect binding: a very professional method of binding several (usually 50+) pages using specialist glue and covers. Practically all commercial books are perfect bound; if you look at the spine end-on you will see the groups of pages (called signatures) and the glue that holds them all together.

Case binding: expensive but very luxurious; the best place to see an example of case binding is on a hardback book with the dust cover removed. A deep groove is scored into the board near the spine which is what makes case binding instantly recognisable.

Screw and post binding: suitable for very large documents up to 100mm thick in some cases, screw and post works a bit like a set of nuts and bolts running through holes drilled in the edge of the pages. It has the added advantage that users can remove and add pages at will, but because it cannot be automated it is relatively expensive.

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