Your customer has just requested a perfect bound book with enhanced capabilities to lie flat when opened. You check your list of trade
bindery service providers and see that some of them promote the ability to
produce Layflat Binding (or Stayflat or Otabind). Problem solved, right?
Not necessarily. There are several critical planning steps that must be considered during the design and prepress stages of the project that ultimately determine the cosmetic and functional success or failure of the book.
A successful Layflat binding style is accomplished by building the book so that the spine of the book block is not attached to the spine of the book cover as with a standard perfect bound product. The Layflat book block must first be adhered to a fabric liner rather than a book cover. The bound book block will then be attached to the cover between a pair of hinge scores specifically placed on the front and back cover. This design allows the spine
of the book cover to separate from the book block when the book is opened,
allowing the spine of the book block to float above the book cover. This design reduces resistance and allows for an enhanced Layflat characteristic when the book is opened.
In order to build a successful Layflat product, design and prepress planning must incorporate specific requirements for hinge scores, graphics and text placement on the covers and interior text pages. Design requirements must also provide consideration for cross alignments, page borders, and if necessary, drill hole placement. Failure to plan for these critical characteristics will result in an unhappy customer.
The Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery are prepared to assist you with the critical planning requirements for Layflat Binding.
Give us a call and let us show you how we can help ensure a successful
project for you.
Incorporating UV Coating into perfect bound print projects is a great opportunity to enhance the visual and cosmetic characteristics of a printed piece. Understanding interaction between UV Coating and binding adhesives will help printers avoid unpleasant surprises in the finished product.
A key ingredient in the chemical make up of UV Coating is silicone. Silicone provides a degree of “slippery-ness” in the coating. The amount of silicone in UV can have a dramatic impact on the ability of the binding adhesive to stick to or repel from the UV coated material. Depending upon the amount of silicone used in the chemical make up of the UV Coating, adhesion problems may result. In other words, more silicone equals more binding related challenges. Since the bindery will not have any knowledge as to the silicone content in UV coated materials, problems will likely not be identified until the binding process is underway or complete.
Binding adhesion problems with UV coating may appear in a number of different ways. If the UV coating is a flood coat extending into the spine grind area and the UV coating contains a high level of silicone, there may be total adhesion failure at the spine. The silicone content will repel the binding adhesive and not allow a stable or consistent adherence between text paper stock, the spine adhesive and the book cover.
A UV coating with a lower level of silicone content may allow for adequate adhesive strength, but may allow for adhesive migration up between text pages. Adhesive that migrates as little as 1/16” up from the spine will result in paper fibers tearing between pages as the book is opened. Although the binding strength is adequate, the cosmetic result is poor and will be unacceptable to the customer.
When planning for a page or pages utilizing flood UV coating in a perfect bound book, make sure to knock out the spine grind area. Eliminating the UV coating in the spine grind area will help insure an appropriate binding strength, while eliminating the potential for adhesive migration between pages, thus ensuring the quality level that you and your customer desire.
Involving the Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery can help you avoid problems such as recognizing or avoiding potential production challenges with UV Coating. Give us a call and let us help you achieve your customer’s expectations.
It all comes down to accurate specifications! The better the detail, the more accurate the estimate! No one likes surprises; particularly when it comes to final pricing of a project. Providing as much detail as possible at the quoting stage is a key to providing estimates that will still be accurate when the production process begins.
Often times, the initial request for quote is referred to as “budget” or “ballpark”. Allied Bindery will provide a quote that is accurate to the specifications that are provided. In some instances, the actual job
requirements can be significantly different than the original “budget”
estimate. If the purchase order contains different specifications than the original estimate, the estimate will need to be validated or revised.
Many times, specification changes may have a slight impact on final pricing. It may be that the basis weight of the paper was changed, resulting in costing and pricing changes in the amount of adhesive, cartons or shrink wrap film that is required. These are generally minor revisions to cover
material costs. Sometimes, the change may be significant. For example, a
binding project could have been quoted as two-up. In reality, the final project could be a come & go format, having a significant impact on labor costs. Maybe you will need a partial quantity bound and delivered before the balance of all material is available. This will have an impact on set up costs, since an additional set up will be required. These costs tend to be higher and need to be communicated to your customer as soon as possible.
In all cases, when a project becomes live and a purchase order is provided, our Estimating/Order Entry specialists will review the scope of the purchase order in comparison to the original estimate. If any changes or revisions are required, you will be contacted prior to the start of the job so that you will have any updated pricing that is required. It is important to note that all estimates are tentative, pending the actual specifications for a project.
Sometimes, from a visual perspective, nothing catches the eye like an oblong book or brochure design. Because an oblong trim size can be more difficult to fold, stitch and bind, there are a number of planning tips that must be considered to make the production of your project flow smoothly.
Consider the benefits of printing and binding your oblong project in a multiple-up format. Oblong projects usually combine wide pages with narrow (short) spine heights, presenting feeding and travel difficulties
on stitchers and binders. Planning your oblong project to be printed and bound in a two-up, three-up or more format, provides the bindery with a much more stable product to feed through collators and along saddle or gathering chains. A multiple-up format often reduces production costs, both in the printing and binding process, while insuring a higher level of cosmetic quality.
Make sure that you understand the minimum and maximum size limitations of the bindery equipment when selling, planning and printing oblong projects. Projects may look great right through the printing process, but finding out that one of the dimensions is either too small or too large to feed through bindery equipment can result in a very expensive and embarrassing mistake.
Consider a two-up, oblong format or perfect binding, Allied Bindery can assist you with creating Come & Go layout formats on many jobs, saving considerable cost through the printing, as well as the bindery production process. Having book saws on both of our binding lines allows for a high level of productivity, while providing significant cost and price advantages to our customers.
Oblong projects often require folding layouts that include accordion and double parallel folding in consecutive folding gates. Allied Bindery can help you plan the accordion fold layout to minimize the potential for dog-ears that may occur during the subsequent double parallel folds required to finish a signature.
Involving the Sales and Planning professionals at Allied Bindery can help you avoid problems such as recognizing or avoiding potential production challenges with oblong projects.
Your book or brochure is finished. The samples look great and the job is on the way to your customer. Then the phone call from the dark side is received. The job showed up and is full of scuffs and scratches! What the heck happened!
In the simplest terms, transit vibration is the movement that takes place within a carton, or palletainer, while product is shipped, generally via truck, to the final destination. This movement causes product surfaces to rub against each other, causing scratches and patches of surface coating or ink to rub away. The end result is a cosmetically defective product.
Transit vibration marking can usually be tracked back to the coating on the surface of the product. Aqueous coating, for instance, is a popular choice among printers due to the luster and relatively inexpensive cost. However, aqueous coating is also very soft and prone to mark easily. If an aqueous coated product is subjected to transit vibration, the end result is often very messy. Surface coatings that include metallic inks or dark color, full ink coverage are also highly susceptible to transit vibration marking.
There are several options a printer may choose to minimize the potential for transit vibration damage:
- UV Coating tends to stand up well, but is an expensive option.
- Most film lamination choices will protect against transit vibration issues. Again, this is an expensive option.
- Shrink wrapping the product prior to shipment is a relatively cost effective option and can be performed by the bindery service provider. Product can often be wrapped in convenient quantities, reducing the price of protection even further.
Allied Bindery performs a rub test on all book, magazine, catalog and booklet covers in an effort to determine if transit vibration may be a problem. If it appears that a product may be negatively impacted by transit vibration, we will contact you to discuss protection options.
We encourage you to contact your Allied Bindery Representative to discuss project planning issues such as the prevention of transit vibration marking. Our experience and ideas will likely save you money or help avoid the creation of a production problem.
A core value of Allied Bindery is to communicate on an on-going basis with our industry friends. Our objective is to share insight and observations considered valuable and helpful for our customers, helping you to provide an ever-increasing value proposition to your customers.
Allied Bindery is a premier trade bindery located inMadison Heights,Michigan, celebrating 20 plus years of servicing your bindery requirements.
Printers often incorporate spine perforations into the printed signature, whether folding a sheetfed form or delivering directly from a web press. The perforation provides a distinct advantage to the folding process. A spine perforation allows air to escape during the folding process, reducing the chances of wrinkling, bottling or shingling. This, in turn, results in a better looking final product.
A significant risk that is often overlooked by a folder operator or web press operator is the size of the perforation blade or wheel. If a perforation is too aggressive, i.e., lots of perf, not much paper remaining; the spine of the signature may break apart during the collation/gathering process at the bindery.
The amount of paper that is left intact on the spine provides the only strength to hold the spine together during the collation process. The mechanical gathering process in the bindery requires that the spine of a signature be pulled down into the collator grippers using vacuum suckers. If the perforation blade or wheel used at the folder or press was too aggressive, the paper will peel apart at the spine of the signature when the vacuum suckers begin to the pull the form into the grippers.
Once this happens, there is often no alternative other than to hand feed the affected signatures. Hand feeding or hand collation results in increased expense and decreased production speed on the binder. This is a phone call that the bindery does not want to make and the printer doesn’t want to receive.
A quick way to check the strength of the perforation is to flex and jog a handful of signatures at the folder or web press. If the perforations show any indication of splitting or breaking apart during the hand jogging routine, they will break and fail during the mechanical collating process. If this is noticed, it is time to change to a less aggressive perforation wheel or blade, thus helping to avoid unanticipated problems and additional charges during the binding process.
Incorporating a pocket folder as the cover for your perfect bound project adds a visual pizzazz that can impress your customer. Keep in mind that there are several key planning steps that must be considered to ensure that the pocket folder cover design is successful.
A pocket folder cover project must be designed and prepared to allow for pre-binding of the text block, prior to inclusion of the cover. The purpose of a pre-bind of the text is to allow the face and foot edge of the book block to be trimmed smooth prior to being aligned with the face and foot edge of the pocket folder.
Once the book block has been pre-trimmed at the face and foot edge, the book block can be combined with the pocket folder cover, using the foot edge as the primary collating guide. The Binder Operator will then adjust the amount of spine grind to allow the face edge of the book to align with the face edge of the pocket folder. Once the book block is glued into the pocket folder cover, a head trim is performed, resulting in text that is nearly perfectly fitted to the pocket folder cover.
Remember, the face and foot edge of the pocket folder cannot be trimmed without destroying the pocket. Fitting of the text to the pocket folder cover during two binding passes, as described, leaves the pocket folder intact, providing smoothly trimmed text and a pleasing product to your customer.
Involving the Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery will help you avoid problems during the planning and design stages for pocket folder covers. Give us a call and let us help you achieve your customer’s expectations
A core value of Allied Bindery is to communicate on an on-going basis with our industry friends. Our objective is to share insight and observations considered valuable and helpful for our customers, helping you to provide an ever-increasing value proposition to your customers.
Allied Bindery is a premier trade bindery located inMadison Heights,Michigan, celebrating 20 years of servicing your bindery requirements.
You’ve just received a call from your bindery service provider informing you that they have stopped drilling your project because text or graphics are being drilled through. Now what?
If you’re lucky, the content or design being drilled through is inconsequential. But what if the data being compromised is pricing information, or, product identification codes? Perhaps it’s a data chart? You could be facing a reprint or a significant discount to your customer, who will most likely be unhappy with the final product.
Allowing for drill hole margins is crucial to meeting the quality expectation of your customer. In all likelihood, they expect the printer to think of attributes like this. Failure to include necessary margins to avoid drilling text or graphics will result in cosmetic failures, at best, or the elimination of critical information, at worst.
Whether a book is being drilled for inclusion into a standard three ring binder or a special five hole automotive post binder, an appropriate gutter margin must be allowed on both text and covers. Also, it’s important not to forget how drilling may effect any fold out forms or bound reply cards. Each of these items may be easily overlooked, particularly if your company does not consistently produce drilled products.
Involving the Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery can help you avoid these types of problems. We can provide you with the appropriate margins or templates that allow you to effectively plan for projects with drilling requirements. Give us a call at 248-588-5990 and let us help you achieve your customer’s expectations.
Publishers, Designers and Printers often look for cost effective ways of making their project more attractive or eye catching. One option to consider is the round cornering of your bound or stitched project.
Round cornering provides a smooth, symmetrical curve to the face edges of the product, providing a visual effect that can be eye catching.
There are a number of things to remember when considering the use of round cornering:
- There are several sizes of round corner dies, so, it is best to provide the bindery with the trim size of the project so that the correct round corner dimensions may be provided.
- Although round cornering can be applied to either perfect bound or saddle stitched books, it is most visually pleasing on perfect bound work. A saddle stitch book, by design, will not have as smooth of a face trim as a perfect bound book. As a result, the round cornering will not look perfectly smooth on a saddle stitched product.
- The design of the cover and text must be done with the round cornering in mind. The project must be designed so that the round corner cuts do not remove or impede upon any graphics or text. Plan for at least 1/8” clearance between the round corner and any text or graphics that must remain on the cover design.
Involving the Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery can help you plan for any round cornering requirements. Review of project trim size, thickness and cover and text design will result in a superior end product for your customer.
Saddle stitching is a core service offering for most printers. There are a few things to keep in mind when planning saddle stitch work to give your operators, or trade binder, the best opportunity for success.
Saddle stitch signatures should be planned with a high folio lap (or lip) of at least ¼”. If the paper is available, extend the size of the lap up to 5/8”. When folding the signatures, make sure the folder operator achieves consistency with the size of the lap. Nothing will drive a saddle stitcher operator to frustration faster than a varying lap size that causes mis-feeds and dropped signatures.
If your project requires a foldout, gatefold or accordion (Z-fold) signature, plan for this form to be tack glued when folding, so that the signature does not come apart or unravel when feeding through the collator pocket. Allow at least 3/8” of foot trim margin (1/2” is better) for placement of the tack glue. This additional margin will help insure that all of the tack glue is removed during the trimming process.
If the saddle stitch project is to be re-folded after stitching, make sure that your planner and customer know that the stitches should not be planned to align with one another after the re-fold. By applying stitches in an offsetting position, the stitched area will be less subject to tearing or ripping due to undue stress.
Also, if the project is to be re-folded after stitching, keep in mind that the thicker the product, the higher the potential for push out, wrinkling or gusseting. This is not a phenomena that the bindery will be able to overcome and should be addressed ahead of production with your customer.
Finally, consider the grain direction of the cover. Planning for covers to print long grain (parallel to the spine), will help minimize cracking and marking during the cover feeding, folding and application process. If you must print a cover short grain (perpendicular to the spine), have the cover die scored to minimize the potential for cracking and distortion along the spine when it is folded.
A core value of Allied Bindery is to communicate on an on-going basis with our industry friends. Our objective is to share insight and observations considered valuable and helpful for our customers, helping them to provide an ever-increasing value proposition to their customers.
Allied Bindery is a premier trade bindery located in Madison Heights, Michigan, serving your bindery requirements for more than 20 years. Give us a call today and allow us to help you meet your business and service goals.
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