Digital Copy chose a Premier 420 Perfect Binder from Terry Cooper Services (TCS) to complete its line-up of in-house bindery capabilities and begin offering a trade service.
‘Perfect binding was the last of the finishing capabilities we were outsourcing,’ explained Jim Lawrence, director. ‘Run lengths were getting smaller and when factoring in the time and delivery costs of sending these jobs out it made sense to invest in the technology ourselves. We could then also ensure quality and consistency.’
The Premier 420 binder crease/binds in one process and runs at 400bph. It features a heavy-duty design for production durability, special book clamp design for safety and two application glue rollers for superior, efficient application. It also has an intelligent control, seven-inch touch screen menu function with self-test and diagnose capabilities.
Mr Lawrence continued, ‘We do a lot of work for conferences as well as the educational and financial sectors. Located where we are, on the edge of the City, we are asked for a lot of short run fast turnaround work. Sending jobs out meant waiting. We don’t have that anymore. We can turn jobs around now by the next day instead of 48 hours.’
The flexibility and reliability of the binder has enabled the operation to take on a wider variety of jobs said Mr Lawrence, ‘We often do runs of 500 or so and yesterday, for example, we did a run of 11 A3 books. We don’t have to think about how to plan that in any more. We know we can do it. We can also sell the service to the trade as there are not that many businesses that can handle that type of short-run perfect bound work.
‘Work takes hours rather than days. There is no waiting around. Also with the jobs we have run on it so far we have been very pleased with the results. We expect the Premier 420 Perfect Binder will have paid for itself within eight months.’
There were a number of performance capabilities that made the binder stand out for Mr Lawrence when he was reviewing the options. He said, ‘We liked the compact build, reasonable price, speed of operation and it is very easy to use.’
