Allied Bindery

Bound for Excellence

Archives for October 2011

Do’s and Don’ts When Planning Oblong Trim Size Projects

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.

Transit Vibration – A Bad Ending to a High Profile Project

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.