Getting Compact
I was reminded recently of a good example of innovative design. I had seen GBC’s eBinder at ON DEMAND 2009 in the Xerox booth where it was shown in-line with a Xerox Nuvera, but the full impact of the design took a while to sink in. As is often the case, a picture can tell the story better than a wordy description. The eBinder uses a single flat plastic consumable (see below) to form an elliptical lay-flat, wrap-around binding that can support document page counts ranging from 2 to 100 sheets.
eBinder Ellipse consumable (top) and GBC ProClick consumable (bottom)
Comparable plastic comb or ring binding consumables can’t be stored nearly as compactly as illustrated by the number of boxes required to hold 1,000 GBC ProClicks versus 1,000 of the GBC Ellipse consumable for the in-line Nuvera eBinder.
1,000 GBC ProClicks versus 1,000 of the GBC Ellipse consumable
The visual comparison is stunning, but in fact it actually underestimates the real impact since all other mechanical binding methods that I know of require users to stock combs or coils of varying sizes depending on the page count of the document. Add to that the possibility that customers may also choose from a range of available colors, and you can see how quickly the storage requirements would multiply. And then, after the book is produced, the elliptical design helps multiple books stack in less space than with other mechanical binding methods.
GBC eBind books
Processes can be simplified in many ways, and of course in-line production has a range of workflow benefits other than storage, but in this case the results of a new design concept become most visible when you look at the space, storage, and shipping impact on a typical end user. Run in-line with a Nuvera, the eBinder adds only about adds a little less than 23 linear inches to the length of the system. It’s a nice, compact solution in many ways.
Tags: binding, book, booklet, comb bind, eBinder, GBC, lay-flat, mechanical binding, Nuvera, plastic coil, Xerox
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
