Helpful Tips
This Month's Topic: The Advantages of PUR Binding
November 2003
Not all perfect binding projects are created equal. Some books have design or usage characteristics that demand a binding adhesive that goes beyond what “standard” perfect binding adhesives offer. At Allied Bindery, we suggest PUR (polyurethane reactive) adhesive binding for a wide range of applications, including cookbooks, annual reports, shop manuals, textbooks and more.
PUR is the strongest, most flexible binding adhesive available, and offers several additional advantages over other binding adhesives:
• No ink and coating “knockout” – While inks and coatings compromise the adhesion strength of perfect bound books, PUR adhesive is impervious to these intrusions. The aggressiveness of PUR adhesive makes it ideal for books where heavy ink coverage or flood coatings are present in the spine area.
• Works with a wide range of substrates – PUR adhesive will form a super-strong bond with all weights and finishes of paper stocks. In addition, PUR works well with synthetic and recycled-content stocks and even plastic sheets.
• Crossover images are more accurate – While crossover images must still be overlapped to accommodate the 1/8” grindoff, less operator discretion is required, yielding more accurate crossovers.
• Thin books are no problem – Wavy spines are customary on very thin perfect bound books due to the buildup of glue. That isn’t a problem with PUR adhesive, which is applied very thinly.
• No temperature concerns – Issues such as “cold cracking” can make you think twice about where your perfect-bound books should be used. PUR binding is virtually impervious to temperature extremes, which means your books will stay good as new in the searing heat of a Texas summer or the bitter cold of a Michigan winter.
The Allied Advantage
While PUR adhesive takes the worry out of creating books that are durable and flexible, choosing the right post press partner is equally as important. At Allied Bindery, we perform PUR binding on a wide range of book applications. That level of experience allows us to help you plan books that are prepared for any usage scenario or design you throw at them.
