BINDING & FINISHING

Finishing

In the printing industry, finishing refers to all the activities that are performed on printed materials after printing. Therefore, finishing is the decorative process of completing a product, which includes binding books together. Here at CopyTec we provide a variety of finishes for all of your needs, which include the following:

• Bindery
• Cuts
• Folding
• Lamination
• Coating

Binding

There are multiple ways of binding sheets together, it just comes down to the need of the project. The bindings we provide here at CopyTec are listed below with there descriptions:

• Comb Binding - The teeth of a plastic ‘comb’ are inserted into a series of slits drilled or punched into a stack of sheets. This process is often used for reports and presentations.
• Hard Cover - This provides multiple papers to be bound and neatly put together and is used for hard cover books.
• Perfect Binding - Pages are fixed to a cover or spine using a strong, clear glue. This process is mostly used for paperback books, magazines, telephone guides, and etc. 
• Saddle-Stitch - Pages are bound by driving staples through the center of the spine of folded sheets. This wire binding technique is commonly used for magazines, newsletters and small catalogs, however it's limited to the number of pages that can be bound.
• Spiral Binding - A continuous wire or plastic coil is threaded through holes drilled or punched into a stack of sheets. Spiral binding is typically used for notebooks.
• Wire-O -  is a popular commercial book binding method. Documents that are bound with wire binding will open completely flat on a desk and allow for 360 degree rotation of bound pages.

Cuts

For most projects to be completed, a variety of cuts need to be made to complete the project. We have the ablity to cut a stack of papers in one load and get the exact measurements every time, and it's cheap! Come to us if you ever need help cutting multiple papers! 

Folding

Whenever magazines, books, brochures, or flyers are printed, they need to be folded into the proper length that is required. The types of folds we provide here at CopyTec include:

• Half Fold - As the name implies, the page is simply folded in half.
• Tri-Fold or Letter Fold - Trifolds are commonly used for marketing events, services or products. The panels fold in on each other to form the finished size. The three panels do not have the same width since you need to compensate for the thickness of the paper in the fold and tolerances of the folding machine.
• Z-Fold - This is a 6-panel accordion fold. Each fold opens in the opposite direction to its neighbor, giving a pleated or concertina effect. All the panels have the same width.
• Gatefold - With a gatefold the two outside panels fold towards the middle. They are slightly smaller than half of the sheet.

Lamination

Laminating refers to bonding a separate material or layer of material to the printed matter. The most common type of laminating is sealing the print between two layers of a plastic material. A typical example of this are menu cards for restaurants which often need to be both sturdy and water-proof. We provide different thicknesses in laminations which include the following:

• 1.7 millimeter
• 3 millimeter
• 5 millimeter
• 10 millimeter

Coating

There are different types of coatings that can be applied to printed matter. Some are water-based and take time to dry, others such as ultraviolet coatings dry when exposed to light or heat. CopyTec currently provides a lamination coating which gives the product a soft-like touch.